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

[Robert Maynard]

Make Moebius discoverable ingame! That's actually an awesome idea IMO.

It's long overdue.

As for population, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Open is not exactly a crowded place either.

Still nowhere near as much as Open - there are probably over 10M potential players in Open - the PG limits are a tiny fraction of that.

BTW you don't need to avoid popular places in Open, I can go everywhere in my shieldless Viper4 and I'm still pretty much alive.

It depends on whether one enjoys the ganker mini-game, or not.

 

[galahad2069]

Still nowhere near as much as Open - there are probably over 10M potential players in Open - the PG limits are a tiny fraction of that.

10M potential players in 2 separate games combined, maybe. As things stand now I rarely can see more than a handful of random players (people who are not on my friend list) on an average day, and even that only if I happen to visit some of the popular systems.

It depends on whether one enjoys the ganker mini-game, or not.

There's a lot of things I don't enjoy like endless supercruising, NPC interdictions and suchlike, but that's just part of the game.
You cannot say you were ganked if they could not shoot you down after all.

 

[Bigmaec]

10M potential players in 2 separate games combined, maybe. As things stand now I rarely can see more than a handful of random players (people who are not on my friend list) on an average day, and even that only if I happen to visit some popular systems.

They all hide in solo or PG, all those millions

 

[Robert Maynard]

10M potential players in 2 separate games combined, maybe. As things stand now I rarely can see more than a handful of random players (people who are not on my friend list) on an average day, and even that only if I happen to visit some of the popular systems.

The games will merge at some point - and every Odyssey player can choose to play Horizons if they wish.

There's a lot of things I don't enjoy like endless supercruising, NPC interdictions and suchlike, but that's just part of the game.
You cannot say you were ganked if they could not shoot you down after all.

The minigame includes the attempt to shoot one down.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Make Moebius discoverable ingame! That's actually an awesome idea IMO.
As for population, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Open is not exactly a crowded place either.
BTW you don't need to avoid popular places in Open, I can go everywhere in my shieldless Viper4 and I'm still pretty much alive.

I prefer my racing Viper Mk3. I've never once been interdicted in it. I think the gankers take a look at what i'm flying and understand they would be just wasting their time. I'd be out of weapon range before they could even press the button to deploy weapons.

 

[Bigmaec]

I prefer my racing Viper Mk3. I've never once been interdicted in it. I think the gankers take a look at what i'm flying and understand they would be just wasting their time. I'd be out of weapon range before they could even press the button to deploy weapons.

If a ganker has the choice between that feisty unshielded cutter and a racing viper... go figure

 

[Juniper]

Probably it depends on the player to a certain extent.
For me, virtually every single one of them.
For you, I'm not sure. Maybe PG/Moebius. Just don't start to call people around you psychopaths and you'll be fine I guess.

PG / Mobius does not prevent non-consensual PvP.

There is simply no support in the game for that - unlike the vast majority of MMOs out there. E: D is sorely lacking in that regard.

Who is calling someone a psychopath?

 

[Viridian-]

You gankers are just... oh well, I won't stoop to that level, oh hell, maybe I will...

After finishing pilot school and adventuring out into the outside of Pilot Foundation area I got ganked. I am talking a Sidewinder with no engineering updates, and venturing out of the "safe" space, I got ganked. Immediately! I tried again, I got ganked a second time. Some folks say they go 1,000 hours, I got ganked three times in my first 100 hours. So I gave up on Open and went to Solo. I was so much looking forward to MMO, but now I'm stuck with Solo or private groups, just to keep you gankers out of it as I took my baby steps.

So gankers own Open, and it is just too bad for the rest of us. I don't have over engineered ships, and I don't want to concentrate on weapons just yet. One day, after the many, many, many hours of grind, I MIGHT venture into OPEN. But I don't think this was the intent of OPEN, don't venture into it unless you have an over engineered ship and get gud so you can spank the gankers.

I want my OPEN because I would like to encounter a live online universe with interesting folks, establish communications with new friends. But currently, I stay away from OPEN. Private groups with the same mind set is the way to go. OPEN is owned mostly by the gankers and no matter how many debates or how many folks argue it, it is the way they like it. You venture into OPEN, you venture into ganker land. Do not change that, it is what gankers play ED for.

That is fine, gankers need to fulfill there purpose in life, upset everyone else and feel the superior. Fine, but this made OPEN their domain. You venture into it, you face the consequences. It is more exciting with danger, don't you agree?

But there needs to be some domain that allows peaceable folks to meet, congregate, actually work together. Private groups help, CG's help. But OPEN is currently a ganker domain and keeps the number of OPEN players pretty low. Just the way they like it. It is time to stop that nonsense. Frontier needs to explore methods to "open" up OPEN and keep the kiddies from ruining it for everyone else.

Sorry, didn't mean to get insulting. I don't mean to be. Gankers rule, or at least they think they do. But congrats, you have made sure the majority of ED pilots stay away from OPEN. You rule! Feel good? Glad to hear it. But Frontier needs to do something about this, or else I'm confined to Solo till I get that uber "anti-ganker" ship one day.

Okay, I'm wrong and gankers are right, as always. I'm just not good enough, I'm a sorry ED pilot. If I can't live with the "Dangerous", then I suck. Okay, I suck. OPEN is off limits for me. Oh boy!

I honestly don't know what's up with gankers. There are a few ships you can use in open that they'll never catch, so they're my open ships. My courier has no weapons and tops out at 885 m/s. It's very rare that anyone even makes the attempt. If I take my asp explorer out though, it's like they're compelled. They know that 2 hits from their over engineered weapons can take me out before I can even turn about and they just have to do it. Maybe they're just so dissatisfied with the game that they have to ruin it. Maybe someone reading this is going to catch me docking now just to show me I can't always get away. I don't want the game to change the way we interact in open, but it would be nice if there were consequences to certain actions. There is no difficulty in destroying an explorer ship. I think there should be some sort of difficulty introduced. Maybe throw a bunch of system security at them for murdering someone. Maybe if someone spends a whole day ganking, throw a whole damn Farragut-Class Battle Cruiser at them I dunno. The only thing that really es me off about gankers is that there are no consequences. As for anti-ganking ships, they're kinda hard to achieve. You have to be skilled enough and maneuverable enough to get out of an ambush, then fight an enemy ship that was build for a single engagement. You need to build a ganking ship. I've given up on that because I'm one of those casual gimbal users. I got ganked by a viper once in my fas. It was hilarious.

 

[Bigmaec]

PG / Mobius does not prevent non-consensual PvP.

There is simply no support in the game for that - unlike the vast majority of MMOs out there. E: D is sorely lacking in that regard.

Hey, I agree with you on something

 

[LeoBartlet]

Probably it depends on the player to a certain extent.
For me, virtually every single one of them.
For you, I'm not sure. Maybe PG/Moebius. Just don't start to call people around you psychopaths and you'll be fine I guess.

I believe they said, sociopaths.

 

[galahad2069]

I prefer my racing Viper Mk3. I've never once been interdicted in it. I think the gankers take a look at what i'm flying and understand they would be just wasting their time. I'd be out of weapon range before they could even press the button to deploy weapons.

That's an absolutely legit and pretty gank-proof approach. I prefer to shoot back, hence the Viper4 taxi, it's chonky and hard to hit (although it's shieldlless and I'm not using silent running so it does not really like missiles).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

10M potential players in 2 separate games combined, maybe. As things stand now I rarely can see more than a handful of random players (people who are not on my friend list) on an average day, and even that only if I happen to visit some of the popular systems.

Steam peak concurrent players at the moment is around 5k? -ish? Let's roll with that. Let's double it, to cover all platforms. Let's ignore for the moment that Horizons and Odyssey are for the moment split. (yeah, i'm being a bit all over the place here, but think it will suit to illustrate the point). I'll leave consoles out of it though, just consider PC.

So, 10k peak.

A good proportion of players are explorers, many of those will be out in the black. Let's assume 20% of the people playing at any given time are not in the bubble. I'm not sure how busy Colonia is either. Let's say that 20% includes Colonia people as well.

8k in the bubble?

How many systems in the bubble? I understand the number is around 25k.

Of course, some systems are a lot more popular than others. Let's assume roughly half are in systems where people rarely go. Whether its because they are wandering, or have set up their homes there, or they are running missions that are leading them there at the time.

4k in systems which are somewhat frequented by players. How many systems does that cover? I'd guess we are still talking literally thousands. Player groups working the BGS, Powerplay systems. Systems around SD and engineers. Systems with other special features.

Let's make it a nice round 4000 systems that are somewhat popular.

Where does that leave us?

Approximately 1 person per system at any given time.

At this point, does it even matter if that "average" person per system is in Open, PG, or Solo?

And that's before we get into the fact that within systems there are many discrete locations where if someone else is at you won't see them anyway. If i'm at Station A i'm not aware of person on Planet Z. Or if i'm in SC i don't know that someone is doing a CZ in the same system or bounty hunting in a RES.

Even when i'm playing in open and i see friends also in open even if they are in the same system, i might not see them at all, or maybe briefly.

So, when you look at it like this, anyone who thinks that making ED open only (or incentivising open) would change their experience much, they aren't really thinking it through.

By all means, play with the numbers, be more or less generous with some of the estimates. Its not going to make that much of a difference.

The only place where you might see some difference is the really popular systems, or CG systems, but those places already have lots of people in them, you already see people in them, and when it gets too busy, new instances spawn anyway, so more than a certain amount, you're not going to see more people anyway.

Food for thought?

 

[JoeyTheMooch]

Hey, I agree with you on something

 

[Juniper]

Hey, I agree with you on something

Weird. I've only been saying this all along, on almost every post in this thread.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

unshielded cutter

Aren't these things a myth? It has to be suicide to even consider flying one. Not because of gankers. Because of getting through the mail slot without anything going wrong. Sooner or later, the lack of shields will get you killed by the environment.

 

[Kamiyoda]

You don't fit mining lasers on a ship to go hunt Thargoid interceptors

Ironically back in the day OG Thargoids were only weak to mining lasers IIRC.

 

[galahad2069]

Steam peak concurrent players at the moment is around 5k? -ish? Let's roll with that. Let's double it, to cover all platforms. Let's ignore for the moment that Horizons and Odyssey are for the moment split. (yeah, i'm being a bit all over the place here, but think it will suit to illustrate the point). I'll leave consoles out of it though, just consider PC.

So, 10k peak.

A good proportion of players are explorers, many of those will be out in the black. Let's assume 20% of the people playing at any given time are not in the bubble. I'm not sure how busy Colonia is either. Let's say that 20% includes Colonia people as well.

8k in the bubble?

How many systems in the bubble? I understand the number is around 25k.

Of course, some systems are a lot more popular than others. Let's assume roughly half are in systems where people rarely go. Whether its because they are wandering, or have set up their homes there, or they are running missions that are leading them there at the time.

4k in systems which are somewhat frequented by players. How many systems does that cover? I'd guess we are still talking literally thousands. Player groups working the BGS, Powerplay systems. Systems around SD and engineers. Systems with other special features.

Let's make it a nice round 4000 systems that are somewhat popular.

Where does that leave us?

Approximately 1 person per system at any given time.

At this point, does it even matter if that "average" person per system is in Open, PG, or Solo?

And that's before we get into the fact that within systems there are many discrete locations where if someone else is at you won't see them anyway. If i'm at Station A i'm not aware of person on Planet Z. Or if i'm in SC i don't know that someone is doing a CZ in the same system or bounty hunting in a RES.

Even when i'm playing in open and i see friends also in open even if they are in the same system, i might not see them at all, or maybe briefly.

So, when you look at it like this, anyone who thinks that making ED open only (or incentivising open) would change their experience much, they aren't really thinking it through.

By all means, play with the numbers, be more or less generous with some of the estimates. Its not going to make that much of a difference.

The only place where you might see some difference is the really popular systems, or CG systems, but those places already have lots of people in them, you already see people in them, and when it gets too busy, new instances spawn anyway, so more than a certain amount, you're not going to see more people anyway.

Food for thought?

Wow nice thanks.
BTW my point was that the PG member limit (I'm not sure if there is such a thing but someone mentioned 5000 in this thread iirc, so let's accept that) is not really going to affect the number of people you can see. Your numbers (max. 8000 people in the Bubble at peak moments) seem to more or less support that since it makes very little sense to log into Moebius anywhere else and obviously most of those 8000 people will be in Open or Solo anyway.

 

[Juniper]

Aren't these things a myth? It has to be suicide to even consider flying one. Not because of gankers. Because of getting through the mail slot without anything going wrong. Sooner or later, the lack of shields will get you killed by the environment.

It's a challenge though, for those who enjoy the PVE experience. Pretty sure I had one at one point... didn't last long though.

 

[galahad2069]

Ironically back in the day OG Thargoids were only weak to mining lasers IIRC.

Really? LOL

 

[Vedmo]

Aren't these things a myth?

I trade with one sometimes, 792 tons of cargo with a 2k hull, other players are a greater fear than the environment. Still feel safer in it than a shielded Type-9.