To Solo Play Players: If You Could Disable PVP, Would You Play in Open Play Mode Instead?

[Robert Maynard]

258 pages... necro... why???

... because someone posted a link to this thread in a short lived "remove solo" thread:

Is it better to just remove the solo mode? And do some tweaks about ganking?

Some new players keep on saying they get bored after hours of playing. As I think the game didnt offer them the feelings of being buthurt, nervous, scared and in danger. It is the reason they keep on saying the game is empty.

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Brrokk]

... because someone posted a link to this thread in a short lived "remove solo" thread:

Is it better to just remove the solo mode? And do some tweaks about ganking?

Some new players keep on saying they get bored after hours of playing. As I think the game didnt offer them the feelings of being buthurt, nervous, scared and in danger. It is the reason they keep on saying the game is empty.

forums.frontier.co.uk

Oh. Some are still clinging on to that old griefer fantasy after all these years. :-(

 

[Darrack]

Now I don't play SC, but a number of members from my discord does and they say the bigger ships (those usually bought with cash) need a team of players to function effectively. The turrets are not AI controlled like in ED, someone has to man them.

Did they yell you how much those ships cost?
Nah i bet they didnt
And even then they dont work without game breaking bugs, save your time, play any multiplayer game BUT SC.

O7

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

I'd play in Open mode if the frame rate was faster

 

[St0rmFury]

Did they yell you how much those ships cost?
Nah i bet they didnt
And even then they dont work without game breaking bugs, save your time, play any multiplayer game BUT SC.

O7

They did, hell they boasted about it lol.

But hey it's their money, what they do with it is their business...

 

[Robert Maynard]

Oh. Some are still clinging on to that old griefer fantasy after all these years. :-(

Indeed - some players just can't accept that, in the game we all bought, they can't force other players to play in a particular way, as those other players can choose not to play with them.

.... it's as if, for some players, it's OK for them to choose how to play but it's not OK for others to do the same.

 

[Moriarte]

Indeed - some players just can't accept that, in the game we all bought, they can't force other players to play in a particular way, as those other players can choose not to play with them.

.... it's as if, for some players, it's OK for them to choose how to play but it's not OK for others to do the same.

I agree in the letter, but not in spirit. There’s also this aspect of compartmentalisation. The place is too big. The layer of people is too thin. Galaxy - unbound by rules. Mostly. The solo paradise is materialised at the expense of those wishing to have a galaxy with big number of interactions. For these interactions inspire new narratives. I’d venture a guess that number of people wishing more interactions with real people (not just combat) is vastly larger than the number of hermits, if real life is any measure. We buy a multiplayer video game to have these interactions in an interesting setting.

Placing people in safe bubbles in an MP game hurts that game as there are now far less problems to be solved, far less narratives to create, far less development needed to accomodate for that. (The latter is advantageous, saves money) Less tension, less opportunity for discovery. On paper, “let everyone have their way” is fine. In practice: a naive approach.

 

[Brrokk]

I agree in the letter, but not in spirit. There’s also this aspect of compartmentalisation. The place is too big. The layer of people is too thin. Galaxy - unbound by rules. Mostly. The solo paradise is materialised at the expense of those wishing to have a galaxy with big number of interactions. For these interactions inspire new narratives. I’d venture a guess that number of people wishing more interactions with real people (not just combat) is vastly larger than the number of hermits, if real life is any measure. We buy a multiplayer video game to have these interactions in an interesting setting.

Placing people in safe bubbles in an MP game hurts that game as there are now far less problems to be solved, far less narratives to create, far less development needed to accomodate for that. (The latter is advantageous, saves money) Less tension, less opportunity for discovery. On paper, “let everyone have their way” is fine. In practice: a naive approach.

I think it's possible to be misled by the fact that ED looks like an open-world game, but it isn't. It's really a single-player game with a few opportunities to play with others bolted on, not always very neatly.

You're right about the size of the galaxy. One of the best features from the solo point of view is the 1:1 galaxy simulation. But this means that in multi-player, you can't meet another player unless the meeting is organised somehow. This might be by arrangement outside the game (and then it's logical to use a PG to improve instancing), or it might be because of some game narrative like a CG. That's really all. Without one of those kinds of arrangements you're unlikely to meet another player in an average lifetime.

Treat it as a single-player game with a few MP options and "community" narrative, and everything makes sense.

 

[Robert Maynard]

I agree in the letter, but not in spirit. There’s also this aspect of compartmentalisation. The place is too big. The layer of people is too thin. Galaxy - unbound by rules. Mostly.

The galaxy is big regardless of whether all players were to choose to play in Open, or not.

The solo paradise is materialised at the expense of those wishing to have a galaxy with big number of interactions.

Those wanting a big number of interactions bought the same game as those who don't want to interact with other players.

For these interactions inspire new narratives. I’d venture a guess that number of people wishing more interactions with real people (not just combat) is vastly larger than the number of hermits, if real life is any measure. We buy a multiplayer video game to have these interactions in an interesting setting.

If that's the case then the Inara stats indicate that most players would want co-op interactions rather than PvP interactions - however, as both multi-player modes are PvP enabled then those seeking co-op must play among players who can choose to shoot at them.

Placing people in safe bubbles in an MP game hurts that game as there are now far less problems to be solved, far less narratives to create, far less development needed to accomodate for that. (The latter is advantageous, saves money) Less tension, less opportunity for discovery. On paper, “let everyone have their way” is fine. In practice: a naive approach.

Making PvP entirely optional is not a new thing for MMO games - and, if the development of Amazon's New World is anything to go by, then even some MMO that start off development as full PvP change, over time, to make PvP optional.

Regarding this game in particular, those who want to be able to force their particular narrative and play-style preference on other players would seem to have bought the wrong game.

 

[Moriarte]

Treat it as a single-player game with a few MP options and "community" narrative, and everything makes sense.

Oh, it does make sense. I am saying that it’s a weird idea from the start - compartmentalising people into groups and subgroups. It’s too ambitious of an approach. It works great when millions of people bought the game. And suddenly starts to work less great when the daily ppl count is in the thousands instead of tens of thousands. Elite is obviously conceived as a multiplayer simulation, in the age of multiplayer games. With an option to go solo. There are limits, yes, but let’s not make a single player game out of it all of a sudden.

Regarding this game in particular, those who want to be able to force their particular narrative on other players would seem to have bought the wrong game.

If that’s the hill you wish to die on, go ahead. Cutting off even more people because they “bought the wrong game” is not inspiring conversation. Frontier selling many games within games within games makes it a master of none. Cutting off people is exactly the attitude I am being a critic of, that can lead to a game losing it’s way and consequently, players.

 

[Robert Maynard]

If that’s the hill you wish to die on, go ahead. Cutting off even more people because they “bought the wrong game” is not inspiring conversation. Frontier selling many games within games within games makes it a master of none. Cutting off people is exactly the attitude I am being a critic of, that can lead to a game losing it’s way and consequently, players.

It's the hill that players who chose to buy a game with three game modes and a shared galaxy and can't accept that other players don't need to play with them chose for the site of their battle - the game is not designed around their style of gameplay as no player needs to engage with them.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

Making PvP entirely optional is not a new thing for MMO games - and, if the development of Amazon's New World is anything to go by, then even some MMO that start off development as full PvP ...

It isn't a new thing at all. It is more like the "no-brainer" solution for the inevitable conflicts that emerge when forcing incompatible audiences to play together.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

Elite isn't really a PvP friendly game either because there are no real rewards and gameplay offered by the destruction of another player's ship.

Just off the top of my head:

• You destroy a ship, you can't claim or steal it
• A destroyed ship where you can't recover ship parts like engineered modules and weapons
• You can't kill the player
• There is insurance protecting players from perma death
• There is little in the way of tracking players down for good or bad purposes
• Elite supports mode switching which is akin to server hoping in PvP games
• There are no survival elements so you have very little need or incentive to attack another player beyond a desire to wreck destruction on them so it mostly becomes 'picking on a chosen victim'

Don't get me wrong I love a good PvP game, Elite is not imho a good PvP game others might disagree and that's fine.

 

[GreySix]

And if you want a team game on the same ship (multicrew) you go where?

Star Citizen offers that, albeit with bugs, glitches and desync - started out in this video on a remote turret.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I swear these threads will carry on going after the servers for the game have been turned off.

I think that the idea right now that there will be a new mode or fundamental changes to how the game works have already had a very strong suggestion to be beyond the current level of resource.

Maybe we need a new subforum for wishing for unicorns, pixies and PvE modes and things like that.

 

[SergMx]

Star Citizen offers that, albeit with bugs, glitches and desync - started out in this video on a remote turret.

I watched this video and didn't understand it. Some cars, then running through the corridors, what's that for?
This weekend I was joined by people and we shot Thargoid in space. The downtime (not the battle in space itself) was minimal because we are not for that game.

P.S. I remember the days when I played Wing Commanders 1 - 4 and 1-2 Privater. Citizen is not that game.

 

[Rebel Yell]

I swear these threads will carry on going after the servers for the game have been turned off.

Yeah, for the fun everyone playing in solo/PG missed.

 

[GreySix]

I watched this video and didn't understand it. Some cars, then running through the corridors, what's that for?
This weekend I was joined by people and we shot Thargoid in space. The downtime (not the battle in space itself) was minimal because we are not for that game.

P.S. I remember the days when I played Wing Commanders 1 - 4 and 1-2 Privater. Citizen is not that game.

It was just an example of multiple players in an instance working together, or against each other. The vessel you saw at the start has multiple turrets, and I was manning one of them prior to the start of the video. If you want to see actual turret gameplay, my channel includes a few examples.

As for multiplayer in Elite, I'm simply not interested. I prefer exploration on my own.

 

[SergMx]

It was just an example of multiple players in an instance working together, or against each other. The vessel you saw at the start has multiple turrets, and I was manning one of them prior to the start of the video. If you want to see actual turret gameplay, my channel includes a few examples.

As for multiplayer in Elite, I'm simply not interested. I prefer exploration on my own.

It's just that you wrote Citizen. And I don't quite understand why you should mention THIS in the section and thread about the Elite game.
Are you sure you didn't mix up the forum?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Yeah, for the fun everyone playing in solo/PG missed.

Which "fun" would that be, specifically, that cannot be experienced in the other multi-player game mode?