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

[Aewarin Jameson]

If there is to a be a separation between PvE/PvP it must be a complete separation.

From what we know this would be impossible as we all play on the same back end servers - even if you play online solo; in a group with friends; or part of some super-group (like All pilots) then you're still using the same back end systems. There is no distinction.

A planet is under blockade. I'm part of that blockade and, with others, preventing other players and npcs bringing supplies through. You hop into PvE mode (you can handle the npcs let's say), fly through the blockade care-free and completely destroy the balance of play.

This is impossible with the current mechanics. You have to remember that this isn't EVE in so much that you can completely dominate one part of the galaxy. In order to keep lag down, and other resources, the game will instance you. (32 is the bandied number at the moment) This means if you're in a region of space helping the NPCs to blockade it from the enemy and you're player 32, the next player to join will be in a new instance.

Thing to remember - this isn't EVE 2.0 whereby you can have 100s of players in 1 zone, it's Elite 2.0 that you can play with your mates. The fact that you can find new people by virtue of being online in the all pilots is incidental.

I'm all for finding solutions that don't involve splitting the user base, but if there's to be a dedicated PvE mode, it should be exclusively PvE.

From where I sit my preference would be:

- Normal (PvAll)
- Co-operative (PvE only)
- 1 life mode (hesitant to say what it's called as some, sadly, react to a name)

However each "mode" would still use the same back end servers - there isn't distinction and what you do in 1 affects the others, you just can't see them. (Think of the other groups as NPCs in your galaxy)

 

[Cosmos]

One of the oldest MMORPGs introduced a PvE option to a world with unrestricted PvP. It was so popular the PvP world couldn't retain enough players to sustain itself. That was 10 years ago - nowadays there are so many MMORPGs, gamers will probably switch to a different game rather than risk unrestricted PvP. Even if they stick with ED, the single player online and private group options would probably be more attractive than being shot to bits during a nice little trade run.

Some people playing the game will be winding down after a long day at school/work, so their top priority will be to avoid anything that could increase their stress levels. If you ask them to solve the problem themselves, they'll solve it by playing alone.

Ideas for restricting PvP are very much welcome, but it's not as simple as it might appear. Games that construct their own map can easily designate different-but-equal PvP and PvE zones that make everyone happy. But the Elite universe reflects the story of humanity's flight from Earth, which makes things trickier. There will be core worlds with good police forces and a frontier without, but that still means you can't meet new friends and battle NPC pirates together without wading past teenagers eager to show off their manhood. It also means if you fly beyond the frontier to unexplored space and have to send out an SOS, your chances of meeting a fellow traveller are less than the chances of meeting someone that thinks preying on the weak is all part of the experience.

Some people see other players as just better-programmed combatants than NPCs, others get a thrill from beating another human being they don't get when their opponent is a crossword puzzle with delusions of grandeur. Some people are happy to respawn and carry on with their day, others feel peculiarly crushed to know another person is out there taking joy in their failure. Some people (such as myself) have the misfortune of feeling the pain of defeat but not getting the thrill of victory over another person. The developers need to find some way of consistently rewarding every type of player, which isn't easy if they have to mix people who want to shoot and be shot at in with people that want neither.

Finally, to reiterate the bit about frayed nerves - a lot of people have had their say on the topic and gone back to lurking. Most of the positive responses you'll get to your opinions are in the form of silent nodding, whereas most of the disagreement will be somewhat louder. Silent majorities usually find it easier to agree with people that make their point concisely once and avoid repeating themselves. Please tell us what you think, but please don't feel the need to go round it over and over - you'll run the risk of winning the argument with those that talk back but losing those that keep quiet.

Andrew these comments aren't especially directed at you or intended to insult:

I think you will find that it was the carebaring of ultima online that ruined the game and lead to its eventual demise. Competitive multiplayer games aren't for everyone but in an effort to increase sales, executives go down the route of making it easy for everyone, - and in the process remove the challenge in the game and end up alienating those who helped it become popular. Its worth asking if we are creating a great game or trying to make lots of money and what the focus really is.

I tend to play great games for a very long time but when things turn and you see a design philosophy selling out to make a quick buck, I and many others are gone. Then you are left with a game with players who were never really gamers in the first place and in efforts to keep them playing, and squeeze more money out of them the game then ends up being prostituted in the process. Its the catering to 'casuals' that leads to this inevitable slump. I'd suggest the game should be intuitive to play but difficult to master. Reaching Elite or other lofty achievements can only mean something if it is a rare sort of thing - we are not all special snowflakes.

Whatever happens I hope the development team concentrate on creating the best gaming experience they can. Sadly, without a challenge from other players in the form of #spontaneous PvP the only combat experiences you'll have will be procedurally generated NPC's - AI, or the occasional scripted encounter, and thats going to be a rather large yawn after the initial novelty wears off, at least for me.

People also need to think back to playing the original Elite, even Frontier.. How many times did you die trying to manually dock the ship? Or have your ship destroyed by a pirate? If you want to come back home from a hard days slog, put your slippers on and listen to Mozart whilst gliding through vistas of the galaxy, unmolested or confronted by anything I'd say multiplayer games aren't for you.

What I don't condone is situations in a game where another persons actions can repeatedly result in massive frustration and totally ruin other players experience. Having my ship destroyed by someone else is fine by me - provided they can't sit there for the next three hours stopping me escaping and tormenting me to death.

Even though I voted for being able to attack at any time, I do think a correct balance would be to have *some* safer areas - heavily patrolled so that whilst you can attack other players you would be swifty dealt with. That way it could mean you can rinse your safe trade route buying and selling widgets.

I think we need to move on from this disparaging commentary on 'teenagers' because whilst my teen age days are long behind me one thing I noticed through life is that age is no indication of maturity.

 

[lifeschool-amiga]

As a guy who entered this forum for the first time yesterday after reading the newsletter, I have to say I found this whole thread to be way over my head. I've never played any MMO games so I have no idea what to expect. I thought the whole universe would be Multiplayer as standard, with 'single player' like objectives freely available to all. e.g. if some guy posts on a bulletin board that someone needs assassinating, I presumed the mission would be open to anyone, and the first player to get there and kill the guy gets the prize. And that anyone can kill anyone at any time, just as they can maybe connect a tow-rope and help anyone at any time. So yeah, I dont get the single player vs multiplayer thing even at all. I guess I'll just have to wait for the game to come out.

 

[Kerrash]

...
I think we need to move on from this disparaging commentary on 'teenagers' because whilst my teen age days are long behind me one thing I noticed through life is that age is no indication of maturity.

Hear hear,
Now there is the most agreeable thing I have read on the Internet this year

 

[KING5TON]

A small tip for the people who hate PVP.
Never play DayZ.
It will make you cry!

I hope people all get what they want, except those people that are continually arguing about this round and around and around. They need their own game, where they argue a lot about opinions, where you can only win if you change your opponents opinion. I expect it be the longest running game in history with very few if any winrars.

 

[Kerrash]

...

I hope people all get what they want, except those people that are continually arguing about this round and around and around. They need their own game, where they argue a lot about opinions, where you can only win if you change your opponents opinion. I expect it be the longest running game in history with very few if any winrars.

Yeah it's called 'life', we are all part of the simulation here on Earth; and eventually we will discover the answer is just 42

 

[KING5TON]

Yeah it's called 'life', we are all part of the simulation here on Earth; and eventually we will discover the answer is just 42

Well I'm not playing

 

[Susimetsa]

Even without PvP, you shouldn't be able to 'relax' completely as such - it's still Elite: Dangerous, not Elite: Fluffy. Even solo-play should be such that you may have to throw the 4 year old off your lap because you've come under attack from pirates...

I've lost my life... ehm... lost the lives of my characters in many games numerous times because of her meddling. Doesn't really matter when I can always go back to the previous save or try again. In a hostile PvP environment I would certainly be more stressed to "perform" than in a single-player, however.

 

[Kerrash]

Well I'm not playing

Yeah that game is called death, it's surprisingly easy to win that one

 

[Andrew Sayers]

Andrew these comments aren't especially directed at you or intended to insult:

No offence taken, and please don't be offended if I make one correction to an otherwise well-made argument:

Frontier have stuck quite firmly to the position that ongoing development will be funded by paid expansions and servers will be paid for by selling credits. On the rare occasion someone's brought it up in the DDF, I don't recall them even engaging with the topic. So instead of a WoW-like profit model, it looks like their monetary incentive will be closer to something like iPhone/iTunes - sell a great product, offer a great service that increases the product's value without necessarily making huge profits itself.

So far, every indication is they were telling the truth when they said they want to make a game they'd want to play. Here's something one of the devs said somewhat tongue-in-cheekily:

If it were entirely up to me I would only have an iron man all players group However we said there would be ways for players to play with their friends only on the KS and I don't see how we could get away with taking that particular feature away.

I'm sure the final game won't please all of the people all of the time, but I'd be very surprised if it was for nefarious reasons

 

[Elrawkum]

@Liqua: I've never played Eve, so any references to it go completely over my head, nor am I referencing it in any way.

I do understand that this won't be a free-for-all, but the point stands. A system in imbalance may be that way for who knows how long, so we're not just talking about one instance here, but how that system is affected over days, weeks and even months.

It just isn't fair if one player fights tooth and nail against other players to keep that system blockaded (or vice versa) when another can upset that balance without the same challenge. It's fundamentally unfair.

Again with exploring - it isn't fair if some have to battle through other players and npcs to get to 'the prize' when another doesn't. Let's say two PvP players arrive in an unexplored system. They have to fight it out to see who gets the mapping credits/rare finds. Should a PvEer be allowed to jump into the system, ignore those other players and just explore it at his leisure? Or is he prevented from doing so if there's a PvP player anywhere in system?

What if a large group of PvEers decided to terrorise a system? Only npcs could stop them, and the PvP players could do nothing but sit back and wait for it to be over. They are effectively powerless to prevent the system falling into anarchy. That just ain't right.

It's fine having both on non-dynamic, non-evolving games, where everything is instanced and afterwards things are only different for them, but this is an entirely different kettle of fish, and can't rely on solutions that worked for those games.

At the moment, I don't see how you can have PvE in a dynamic, evolving universe on the same server and remain remotely fair.

 

[CaptGrumpyPants]

HERE'S the problem with the whole thread.

Your game is not affected.

If you want to shoot and be shot by people in your game, choose that option. Literally, the only difference between your playing experience with the option and your playing experience without the option is the presence of an extra item on the menu.

Why should others not be allowed to play the way they want and make THEIR OWN STORY, even though it has absolutely no effect on your own game?

OK. So what you are saying is that every game must be built to accomodate your playstyle, even if the game concept needs to be redesigned so you can play your way instead of the way the game was intended to be designed.

I don't like CALL OF DUTY type games but I am certainly not going to ask the developers to change the game design so that the game supports whatever style I want to play. I'll simply find a game that does and play that instead.

I'd hate to see what restrictions and changes you would demand if someone announced they were making a new version of PACMAN or DEFENDER.

 

[CaptGrumpyPants]

It doesn't say "Any way you choose, we'll gladly change the game to support whatever you like)". ELITE is ELITE. If you don't like the game in it's natural form then don't play it. But please don't ask them to change it so that it is crippled. Multiplayer ELITE is ELITE with people. What happens, happens. RISK is part of the trading model and always has been. I don't think it should be separated into PVP and PVE as those are terms that simply don't apply to ELITE. This separation creates two different games, neither is ELITE:

1) I can trade and talk to people but no one can ever shoot me unless they area bot
2) I can shoot other people but now that's all there is as this is now called PVP so the only thing that people will do is attack each other-- that's just not ELITE

 

[Elrawkum]

He's also wrong. Unless there's a completely separate PvE server, his and other PvEers actions WILL affect my, our, everyone's game. Isn't that the whole point?

What we do matters.

 

[CaptGrumpyPants]

If there is to a be a separation between PvE/PvP it must be a complete separation.

Nothing the PvE players do can be allowed to affect the PvP universe in any way. If they explore a system in PvE, it remains unexplored on the PvP server.

It would not be fair if I'm exploring a system, about to uncover a valuable find and then a PvE player comes in and takes it from under my nose without me being able to do a damn thing about it. If there's a war in a system, and there are a bunch of PvEers on one side and PvPers on another, neither can affect the other. A large group of PvEers could effectively run rampant throughout the universe and the other players wouldn't be able to do anything but watch.

Edit - another example:
A planet is under blockade. I'm part of that blockade and, with others, preventing other players and npcs bringing supplies through. You hop into PvE mode (you can handle the npcs let's say), fly through the blockade care-free and completely destroy the balance of play.

In a dynamic, evolving universe, if shared between all players, you have to have a balanced play-field. Or separate them entirely. You can't even have 'part-time' PvE, for the same reasons.

I'm all for finding solutions that don't involve splitting the user base, but if there's to be a dedicated PvE mode, it should be exclusively PvE.

Well said. Can't have the two in the same universe; destroys the game for everyone.

 

[jabokai]

Well said. Can't have the two in the same universe; destroys the game for everyone.

Solo online players and private groups have the same effect... in your view the game is already destroyed.

 

[Elrawkum]

In effect, yes. It's fundamentally unfair for those players to be able to affect what others are doing, or the ongoing evolution of the galaxy, without any recourse to stopping them.

It can be used for individually instanced missions, perhaps, but in the larger evolving galaxy, it's just not cricket.

Edit: Again, using the exploration example: Two players are fighting over an unexplored system. SP Online guy comes on, explores the system unhindered, leaving the two PvP guys with battered ships, depleted resources and the system now mysteriously explored, and the best finds 'robbed' from under their noses with nothing to show for it and no way of stopping it. Where's the justice?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It just isn't fair if one player fights tooth and nail against other players to keep that system blockaded (or vice versa) when another can upset that balance without the same challenge. It's fundamentally unfair.

As I understand it that would be the case in a solely PvP environment anyway.

The instance limit is 32, for unavoidable technical reasons. If the players are the key factor that's blockading the system then they must be considerably tougher than any NPC blockaders (or the PvE group could just run into some tough NPC blockaders instead and also have a hard time).

A player group trying to run the blockade can then enter in an alliance of >16 players. Either the player group blockading is smaller than that (in which case they're probably going to get walked over) or they're bigger (in which case they'll end up in a separate instance because they won't fit and the blockade runners will end up fighting NPCs anyway). From what's been said in the posts in the DDF archive, they'll end up fighting a lot of NPCs if they go around in an alliance that big - but it makes no difference that they're PvP or PvE.

Space is huge, and even the orbital space of a single planet is massive. "Blockading" a system (or even a planet) would require thousands of ships to stop someone slipping through without a fight by going around them. Tens of thousands, perhaps - you have to sleep sometime, right? Now, okay, Frontier have said there will be mechanisms to group players together if at all plausible, but you're still looking at hundreds of well-organised players needed to effectively blockade a system around the clock, spending much of their time blowing up waves of NPC blockade runners.

So any player-led blockade is going to have to be massively NPC-assisted anyway. Perhaps if a bunch of players get together to blockade a system, the game will mark the system as blockaded, and generate a bunch of extra blockading NPCs to fight those players who don't for whatever reason - group settings, playing online single-player, too many to fit in the same instance, you were asleep, etc - don't run into the players doing it.

For that matter, compare the size of the biggest ships players can have - freighters like the Anaconda - with the capital ships NPCs can have. One of those shows up, even a full 32-strong player fleet is going to be in serious trouble without similar NPC backup.

(Similarly with PvE players terrorising a system; the ability of PvPers to directly defend a system against other PvPers is going to be somewhat limited)

Exploration is an interesting point, but as I understand it there are going to be so many unexplored systems (millions...) that the chance of two rivals trying to explore the same part of the same system at the same time is fairly small anyway. What if the other player shows up 20 minutes after you've left the system but manages to do take a quicker route home? Or takes a few readings in a different bit of the system, and hyperspaces away when they see you coming - do you hunt them down across hundreds of light years just to protect a little bit of data? If they're running back home to scoop you on this system, that's ten other unexplored systems nearby which you can search and report on before they get back. PvP versus PvE again doesn't seem likely to make a lot of difference.

 

[Elrawkum]

The point is in a PvP environment, other players can stop you. If there are PvE players in the mix, they can do nothing about it at all. It's not difficult to illustrate times when it won't matter much, but even out the numbers, or stretch the effect out over a long period of time, and it becomes a lot clearer how unfair it is...

Intervening in events is absolutely fundamental to the design as I understood it, and it doesn't matter how small our influence is, if it isn't on the same level playing field as everyone else, it matters.

I like the idea of what the vast majority does impacting on my SP game, but I don't think it should work the other way around. Not unless I'm prepared to get out of my 'cocoon' and put my neck on the line.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

asking about EVE

EVE is a space sim whereby everyone is in the same galaxy at once; there are safe zones and no-so safe zones; there are natural choke points on the map through which players patrol and guard which cuts of regions of space to non-aligned players; there are no instances so battles of 1000v1000 could be possible .. the main reason is that you don't actually fly the ship it's all point-n-click. You click your weapons to start firing and the computer fires for you, etc. (Unlike ED whereby you fly and actually pilot your ship which is why you can't have 1000s of players in 1 area due to the amount of data needed to tfr about the place which causes major lag)

The point is in a PvP environment, other players can stop you.

Then the PvP aspect of this game is not quite what you expect. Remember there is a natural limit to the number of players per instance - if 32 of you are battling it out in some region of space the 33rd player upon arrival will find nothing there (other than NPCs of course - there could be hundreds of them )

I like the idea of what the vast majority does impacting on my SP game, but I don't think it should work the other way around. Not unless I'm prepared to get out of my 'cocoon' and put my neck on the line.

That doesn't make sense given how FD are handling the data - if the back end servers are the same for everyone online, then regardless as to whether you're solo; grouped; or with all, your actions make a difference. The only subtle point is that solo your actions will make a little small difference, whilst the collective as a whole (if they act in unison) would make a larger difference. Each affects the other.