Why are players treated differently then NPCs?
- Thread starter GimpstersGhost
- Start date
I think what you are missing is that not everyone who wants to look like an NPC doesn't want player interaction.
personally i do want player interaction, what I DON'T want is to be singled out BECAUSE i am a human.
If I am carrying a juicy cargo, if I am in a dangerous area, if i am in a large battle, If i am trying to sneak illegal cargo into a station then maybe i should be a target for a player who doesn't know if i am an NPC or a human being.
I get the benefit of being more immersed into a game where my death is for a reason that is relevant to the game and the player who attacked me has the added tension of not knowing if he is attacking an NPC or a human who will be much more difficult to kill.
I don't want to hide from other players. but i dont want my being a human player to be the reason i am targetted.
Goilveig,
As an ex-EVE player I can assure you that having all ships appear the same on the scanner has absolutely no bearing on the ability for players to interact with each other in either a positive or negative way. The prime limiting factor is the almost complete lack of useful social features in Elite. Representing NPC and Players differently on the scanner is a poor placeholder for intuitive and useful social tools.
This poster gets it.
Well, apart from trying comms (which would tell you if someone is a PC or NPC), you can also look at whether they are a member of a minor faction, you could look at their loadout vs. combat ranking (e.g. a Mostly Harmless with shields is a PC), and most importantly, you can simply look at their piloting. Anyone observant can easily tell the difference, particularly in how the pilot anticipates or reacts to danger.
Supercruise is the only area where NPCs fly mostly like players, and even there, particularly on the final approach, they fly differently. They are capable of dropping out of supercruise at significantly higher speeds, so they decelerate a lot less.
People who truly want to target real players will not care about role play, etc, and will be quite happy using a tool to monitor the game's network traffic to tell when players are in their vicinity. You cannot win this little battle as long as it's P2P. So the whole desire for PC/NPC anonymity is fundamentaly flawed from the start.
Yes, there will be some who will do this, but they will likely be a minority. Most players are probably like me, here to play the game, and do not have the knowledge or inclination to do what you suggest would happen. I think you are just scare-mongering because there isn't actually a good reason why this should not be implemented... at least nobody has come up with a good reason yet.
Dont like seeing other players? Play solo.
Wow, straight in with a strawman huh? Who said anything about not wanting to see other players? This is nothing about 'not wanting to see other players'. This is about introducing an OPTIONAL game mechanic that adds realism. With your transponder off there is no longer a big arrow over every player's head. With the transponder off it becomes like it should be... you see a ship, you go and investigate it (conversely, you see another ship approaching you have to decide whether it means you harm on that evidence alone and not some big arrow saying 'I'm a player coming to get you'). Transponders introduce a whole new level of cat and mouse excitement with the added bonus of making players feel a little bit safer, and doing it realistically. And another added bonus being that having transponders might just stem the flow of players to Solo and bring them back to Open.
Edited to add: Why not try it for a month? See what happens and if it doesn't work then everything just reverts to how it is now.
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Really can't see the point of this, this mechanic would just make this game feel even more devoid of human life for me.
When I see a box heading for me in space, it doesn't make any difference, except when hollow I'll try to have a chat.
If we end up with human players all looking like NPCs then solo will be the same experience for me as group and open.
I'd be unhappy if the game went this route.
When I see a box heading for me in space, it doesn't make any difference, except when hollow I'll try to have a chat.
If we end up with human players all looking like NPCs then solo will be the same experience for me as group and open.
I'd be unhappy if the game went this route.
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But you are assuming that we will automatically have "all human players looking like NPCs". This is unlikely to happen. After all Open Mode is where you will find players who WANT to interact too, and on all levels, these players are going to have their transponders set to on, blasting their presence out into the either. Even those players who choose to have the transponders off will not be invisible, just harder to spot. Once you can make out that they are a player then you have the option of hailing them. Granted, if they are flying with transponder 'off' it is probably an indication they do not want to be interacted with anyway, but there is nothing to stop you hailing them.
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Then why the hell are they playing in Open. And why do we have this whole stupid mechanism?
I'm done now.
Jeff, here. This is mine from another thread. I hope it explains my position succinctly:
" I totally agree that Open Mode means 'open' and yes, anything goes and yes there should be more severe penalties. Let me repost what I said in my original post in this thread:
"This is why I and others are hoping for an introduction of the Transponder idea from the DDF. Basically, this is a transponder that, if 'on', allows other players to see you on the radar like they do now, as a hollow square or triangle. However, if the transponder is 'off' then your ship appears as just another NPC. Now this doesn't mean you are invulnerable to attack or even that you are invisible to other players. It just means that other players have to look a bit harder to see you... of course, the reverse is also true. If you have your transponder 'off' then all ships appear as NPCs to you, so you have to keep your eyes peeled for 'non-npc like' activity. I think it would be fun. "
So, you see, we still have the anything goes, wild-west mode that Open is and should be. All I am suggesting adding to this is a realistic game mechanic that also introduces a method of 'cat and mouse' play that adds more tension to the game while also, again realistically, provides greater security for anyone who wants to minimise interaction (be it chat or PvP). Note I said, minimise and not eliminate. But this might just be enough to bring back some of the flood of players leaving for solo and group (evidence Mobius's ever expanding group) and eliminating any form interaction, ever.
g
So you see, I'm offering a solution (already proposed in the DDF and heavily discussed with more than one poll being heavily in favour) that not only offers players more choice, never a bad thing, but adds another dimension to the Open Mode game. "
Fair points. However in my 'neck of the black' I see comparatively few fellow players, and the thought of reducing this further doesn't fill me with joy.
Of course I could just move... but I've found a sweeeeeet lil ole route...
I'd worry that if they introduce it most players would opt for 'silent running' to avoid the big-target issue you noted before, and alas I may even join them. At the end of the day, this mechanism may improve gameplay for the sneakies amongst us, just not for me.
Edit: just read your post above, and perhaps in light of the rammer-blight (rammergate?), the ability to toggle 'visibility' when approaching a hotspot and engage the docking computer (to fly like an NPC), would help in this regard.... dammit... okay I'm back on the fence on this topic now...
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Joe, I predict they will not introduce this half baked mechanism now. It's too late - people have been playing the game too long and have an expectation of the experience that would be changed too much by its introduction for the benefit of, well, precious little. Satisfying a few diehard RP people who have never had the mechanism and are still playing the game anyway, without adding this in, a feature that would attract next to no new people and risk alienating more (IMHO).
You may well be right, I don't know. But, you may just as easily be very wrong and you can't know either. Let's try it for a month and see what happens. Even do it in a Beta so that it is opt-in to try it.
Depending on how people fly and especially their name its not like its hard to pick a player out without icons. Pirates will shoot whatever the nicest looking ship may be and now they have the option of showing up as an NPC... so it works both ways. Im more concerned with NPCs abiding the same rules and gameplay restrictions we as players deal with.
They changed the promised game play experience quite a lot after we put money in to get the game made, if they'll do it to people who put several hundred pounds into the game then there is no reason they cannot do if to those who just bought the game after release.
I've not read the EULA all the way through but it's a safe bet as it's an online game that it says in there the gameplay experience will change over time, so there is no reason not to try things and see if they work or not.
So many good ideas in the Design Forum its depressing.