"What's in it for the trader?" - Dumbest question ever?

[R3DB3RD]

Logic? There's no logic here?

By the Ops own admission,

'bored and frustrated'
'game mechanic's'
'lazy devs and enablers'

Blame, conjecture, opinion, hearsay.

If you're playing this game on... Omg! THE POTENTIAL! You should really stop playing and get some counselling, maybe some instruction in mindfulness. Carrying out an activity that frustrates and angers you because of what 'shoulda coulda woulda' is not conducive to good mental health.

Yes. I am being serious.

Get some help.

What's in it for the Traders you ask?

Nothing.

What's in it for Traders that like to role-play?
Emergent Gameplay, social interaction, excitement, challenge, thrills and spills, making friends, making enemies, competitive gameplay so on and so forth.

How many Traders like to role-play?

Those that do, get all the reward and play in Open already.
Those that don't. Play elsewhere.

Some people don't want to play with you. It's not their fault, that those people who do want to play with you, all want to play the Pirate and none the Trader.

So, I say, Git Sum Imajinashion and stop whinging.

 

[smiths121]

I'm pretty sure you could - the bit the polite people are not saying is no one actually cares and your point is moot.

Cheers though.
Simon

Do you think I won't be able to collect jpegs of celestial objects and cycle through them?

PSEUDOCODE:

ImageArray Stars = new ImageArray("C:\SpaceyPictures")

OnKeyPress()
{

SpaceImage = Stars(RndNumber)

SpaceImage.Show()

SpaceExplorerRank++

}

 

[boringnick]

If you're playing this game on... Omg! THE POTENTIAL! You should really stop playing and get some counselling, maybe some instruction in mindfulness. Carrying out an activity that frustrates and angers you because of what 'shoulda coulda woulda' is not conducive to good mental health.

Yes. I am being serious.

Get some help.

High blood pressures because of pixel ships! Everyone on this forum needs some help!

At least most regulars. It's an endless circle jerk and became a game in itself. Maybe more amusing the ED. Everyone who still participates in it (I guess the deranged-threshold should be the fourth solo/open/player influce thread) is deranged on some level (me included, I fully admit it).

You may notice that these threads get started all the time, and often by new people on this forum. Braben's true achievment aren't the great looking pixel ships, but the ultimate forum fuel generator. ED is an single player PVEP MMO on all fronts (marketing included) and of course, everyone feels wronged all the time. It's like like trying to sell pr.on to asexuals while also market your flick as the greatest hardcore ever to the full blown perverts. Great stuff. One of the best social experiments ever conceived.

I love it!

 

[JuicerPrime]

One thing the OP may be missing is that the question "What's in it for traders?" isn't always asked with the expectation of an answer, but as a rebuttal to the PvP/piracy-centred manifesto posts which occasionally crop up that, essentially, boil down to requesting or demanding that traders come into open and entertain the pirates because emergent gameplay, or living breathing universe, or one of several other nicely-worded reasons that still fail to convey anything other than the pirate wants to be entertained and can't offer anything to the players beind that entertainment outside of...well, call it immersion. No benefit to their time or credit-making efforts outside of an adrenaline rush, which I suspect is more appealing to PvP players than players who enjoy trading.

That lack of justification - "I can't offer you anything concrete in reality, but something something something emergent gameplay food chain entertain us" in turn prompts players to ask "what's in it for the traders?" And to be honest, outside of memories and adrenaline, that question has yet to generate an answer other than stony silence from everything I've seen so far.

And before you ask, no, I don't trade. I did once, but the boredom burned out the part of my brain that let me know love and now I can't feel anything except raw seething despair every time I pick up cargo.

 

[Cosmos]

Unless the trader just enjoys the thrill of being robbed at gunpoint, there's nothing in it for them. Some do, though. Most don't.

This of course is part of the problem. Take away the players and trading is a faceroll space trucking actiivity which has next to no jeopardy involved. I've done it myself in shieldless ships and there was never a situation I couldn't escape. Risk/reward? No such thing. Under these circumstances players have gotten used to a gravy train of making vast riches. So its no surprise that when faced with a player or group of them it suddenly seems like a poor deal.

Back in the original you if you wanted higher profits you needed to go to dangerous places and there was no running away; you had to fight your way through the pirates. One of the problem here is that despite FD talking about moment to moment gameplay we are often forced to fit our ships which end up heavily restricting what role we can perform.

ED is marketed as a singleplayer and multiplayer mmo yet at its heart its a single player game and that is what much of the design has centred around. There's never any need for grouping since the game hasn't ever offered anything challenging enough that can't be done alone. Its this sort of thing thats killed off a whole gamut of gameplay we could be having. Its a complete fallacy btw that you can't move for players attacking you, outside CGs and a few other locations you rarely see other players.

So that trader whose complaining about getting attacked could have asked for an escort if they were going somewhere more likely to see player pirates etc.. I remember back during development there was a description of the game and it mentioned trading and making vast profits 'if you could make the journey'. I wonder whatever happened to that element of jeopardy. Its certainly not something I've experienced in game.

I've heard a number of people talking about wanting to sit down and play Elite to 'relax' and if thats how some want to play the game then fair enough. Personally, I wonder whats wrong with a warm bath, a glass of wine and some scented candles? Yet its this sort of demand that restricts the sort of gameplay we could be having. I wouldn't, for example, buy a racing game and complain it was too stressful because I was required to go fast to be competitive. Metaphorically, this is whats happening with some players and ED.
Whilst its reasonable not to expect to be fighting every second we are in game I do think its all rather odd some take exception to combat and jeopardy in a game set 'against a backdrop of raw anarchy and powerplays', 'a cut throat galaxy'. So if folks want to relax perhaps another activity would be better suited?

At the end of the day Frontier have made the game far too easy placing too great a focus upon playing alone. It might well be marketed as a singleplayer and multiplayer game but as it stands Open play is little more than a novetly. Makes me wonder why they went to all the bother of making a multiplayer game.

So whats in it for traders? Easy money most of the time.. You think there should never be any risk? Seems Frontier agrees, just hop into solo play and 'relax' your way to billions. I find this all rather baffling.

 

[Kvas]

Here is a link to a video of what I think about it (warning! swearing)
https://youtu.be/FbVVT3KOLAI

I was talking about the exact same thing in other thread before I stumbled onto this one.

Less talk and more action! Let's create a group of Traders, Pirates, and Bounty hunters and play cops and robbers with a TS as a Truckers CB radio with 10 codes talk etc, Forums, and all. Who want's to play this way gonna play it, leave the rest to mindless jumping from one star system to another to rise few numbers.

Like I suggested in this thread
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=252794

 

[Cosmos]

I was talking about the exact same thing in other thread before I stumbled onto this one.

Less talk and more action! Let's create a group of Traders, Pirates, and Bounty hunters and play cops and robbers with a TS as a Truckers CB radio with 10 codes talk etc, Forums, and all. Who want's to play this way gonna play it, leave the rest to mindless jumping from one star system to another to rise few numbers.

Like I suggested in this thread
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=252794

hehe.. You might wanna remoev that vid, the mods won't like it since it has swearing in it

 

[R3DB3RD]

High blood pressures because of pixel ships! Everyone on this forum needs some help!

At least most regulars. It's an endless circle jerk and became a game in itself. Maybe more amusing the ED. Everyone who still participates in it (I guess the deranged-threshold should be the fourth solo/open/player influce thread) is deranged on some level (me included, I fully admit it).

You may notice that these threads get started all the time, and often by new people on this forum. Braben's true achievment aren't the great looking pixel ships, but the ultimate forum fuel generator. ED is an single player PVEP MMO on all fronts (marketing included) and of course, everyone feels wronged all the time. It's like like trying to sell pr.on to asexuals while also market your flick as the greatest hardcore ever to the full blown perverts. Great stuff. One of the best social experiments ever conceived.

I love it!

Im other words...
'Im trolling'

 

[Kvas]

hehe.. You might wanna remoev that vid, the mods won't like it since it has swearing in it

10-4, Sorry...

CQ CQ CQ, Anyone brave enough to make it happen? I don't even know how.
Anyhoo, You have my T9!

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Take the player-trader dynamic out, just what's left? The sorry "BGS"? The "ten planet textures" exploration?

What? I don't understand.

 

[Kvas]

Use your imagination.

Traders make money, Pirates hunt Traders, bounty hunters hunt pirates simples.
=Gameplay... If there only was stuff to spend the money on, that would be brilliant.

Everything else is pretty much the same no matter where you go.

I was about to have a break from ED, but this idea made me wanna try it.