It is, but for NPC combat to be anything more than what it is currently (which is farming) FD need to up the difficulty ceiling for the high ranking ships, POIs and Powerplay.
Why I and many others will rarely play open
- Thread starter vanishboy
- Start date
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
...which would still result in farming, at a different player skill level.
No it would not- for example pirate lords I can quite happily stack three or four and fight them all at the same time. A top end Elite rank NPC should be a significant challenge that requires all your focus (and be rewarded as such). Elite rank is currently the top end of NPC skills, not the middle.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Farming is farming - the stack height may vary due to difficulty - but it's still farming.
Then anything can be considered farming if you do it enough. The point is missions are no longer seen as singular challenges, when if you take on a lord or a general you really are put through your paces- or that in a HAZ res you are made to sweat a bit, and not obsess about getting a poor run of pirate lords there.
Personally Ill do PVP FPS much more than Ship PVP unless it evolves into a 20 minute battle then I wont bother. Apart from very very rare occasions I only do ship PVP in CQC. Other people will probably do as they wish, I hope so anyway.
I did PP for approx 9 months, defecting like most players when I got the PP rewards. Did it all in Open only, all combat meaning I was in enemy Control Systems 99% of the time, usually at the Nav Beacon or nipping to the station in SC to restock. I saw 2 players total. One was my own side that tried to gank me on way back to my Home System, the other was at an engineering base but they were in the hangar and I came and went while they were still below ground. YMMV.
They should / could add these back in, to one specific system certainly imo - Riedquat
Totally in line with original 84 game, dont have to go there but if you do you better be ready. One hell-hole in all the bubble, would be amazing for sure imoI think NPCs only attack if you have a bounty against their Power, so not sure haulers get attacked at all but then they wouldnt generally be in enemy systems anyway. I collected bounties for every enemy Power to make sure I got attention from them as was quicker way of gathering the points needed each week and found a few where 3 Control systems were within 1 jump so cycled through them. Dont recall getting attacked by ones I didnt have a bounty for even when in hostile Control systems (had to wipe them occasionally when defecting to avoid attacked by friendly Power and getting penalty and then defected 4 weeks later making them enemy again) As soon as I got a bounty they were after me at Nav Bacons once scanned and in SC which is what I wanted for the extra kills.
Edit: Only the NPC PP 'police' came after me, the wings protecting the PP haulers at Nav Beacons didnt attack unless I attacked them....which ofc I did.
Yep, probably not the only gameplay they killed / spoiled either but it is definitely the main one. I do feel for the genuine RP pirates who lost all that gameplay. Just imagine, we could have had whole Pirate systems where you go to run the blockade just for the fun of it, Im sure many people would do it just for the fun of it, or stay away if it wasnt there thing which is also fine. But its just gone, not dead in the water but certainly sinking fast.
Interesting. Perhaps an opportunity to either attach CQC to wars or maybe some PVP only CZs. Would take time to get going initially but players could choose to fight in PVP or NPC CZs. Thats something Id like to see Frontier introduce.
it really isnt and I do wish people would stop saying this. Its more difficult sometimes to go into SC or to get a landing pad but thats it. It is no easier or harder to play in Open regardless of activity. In fact Wings make it far easier to cheese Combat Zones, rank and Credits coz just one hit needed and 4 people get all of that. Or sit in MC or Wing up to hand in massacre missions they took no part in at all. If anything they should split the payout / rank bonus for wings equally not pay out 4x as much. Lone wolfs have it much harder lets be honest here and stop pretending its harder or more difficult to play in Open.
A: Its just entitled rubbish, stupid and wrong
B: It puts people off trying Open who might have done so
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my example when i say that is about powerplay and may bgs, but powerplay for first, theres no difference between gameplay through mode of course! but if you do powerplay in open you have more risk to encounter other players defending or attaccking, it happens often, so douring this activities play in solo make stuff more fast. just that
When I play in Open Mode I interdict other players in my sidewinder and then spread the message of the Void.
Sometimes I manage to finish typing in the chat window before I get blown up.
I saw 2 PP players total in 9 months of Open PP with 99% of time in enemy Control systems killing ships, 1 wasnt in their system and 1 was at Engineers. More chance / risk in theory maybe but practically speaking, hardly ever happened to me. The only way to guarantee it is to shrink PP entirely to 1 -3 systems of Control / Home and vastly reduce player area. For all I know 100 Cmdrs could have been in next system but they never saw me and I never saw them. Only by concentrating all PP into much smaller area could it even begin to happen the way you think it could. Its not people hiding in Solo, its the amount of systems they could be in or traveling through that makes them hard to find.
This. Galaxy is vast, and even PP area is vast, and even if some people are in same system at open they might still not be instanced at same instance.
Then there is the question, why do you have an alt at all then, if he is in the end just a copy of your 1st one.My alt got trade elite in his first hour of existence just from moving credits from main cmdr via FC.
That's wrong, but made my alt's life so much easier.
1st hour - Trade Elite, 2nd hour - shopping at Jameson's
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
That's what I was getting at.
Depends on the player, their ship, engineering, etc.. Some will find it overwhelming and some will find it to be too easy - it depends on how many players it'd be designed to be achievable by or how few.
In the end its making a mission feel like a mission and not just another stack of pancakes. A pirate lord can be facetanked very easily.
But thats the thing too: the high end (lords, generals, captains etc) should be hard. They should stand out and not obey the general background difficulty. If they don't, they are just credit fodder that takes away richness and diversity from combat.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
While they should indeed be hard, the question is how hard - at which point the whole player-base becomes a consideration, i.e. how few players are they being designed for....
Well you could look at Thargoids- the top end Thargoid is miles harder than anything else.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Fair point.
My main cmdr is associated with Colonia based squadron, infamous Loren's Reapers, so my alt was made for Bubble activities.
Also I use it for exploration trips, so if I'm not in the mood for the black and want to play Elite anyway, there's other cmdr for CG's or whatever.
Currently both are Bubble side, but I hear rumors of incoming disturbances in the Colonia, so one cmdr will go there when time comes, and other will stay for Bubble activities.
And on subject, I isolated myself a bit.
I play now exclusively Solo mode. And I play regularly.
The reason is Elite became one of my mental getaway places from other people.
RL in general and professional part(due to Covid situation) are bit exhausting.
So I am not in the mood for interaction in real time with other people in all games I play, not just Elite.
Before I played exclusively Open, and will do that again when the time comes and my cmdrs get summoned (looking at you, Loren's Reapers
).
I play now exclusively Solo mode. And I play regularly.
The reason is Elite became one of my mental getaway places from other people.
RL in general and professional part(due to Covid situation) are bit exhausting.
So I am not in the mood for interaction in real time with other people in all games I play, not just Elite.
Before I played exclusively Open, and will do that again when the time comes and my cmdrs get summoned (looking at you, Loren's Reapers
).
I never did get out to Colonia before, and despite all my bravado I didn’t go to help the PvPers flip San Tu back to anarchy... but after a few months break I’m picking back up where I left off and sorting out a couple of ‘almost Open ready’ ships to see how populated the galaxy is on PS4.And on subject, I isolated myself a bit.
I play now exclusively Solo mode. And I play regularly.
The reason is Elite became one of my mental getaway places from other people.
RL in general and professional part(due to Covid situation) are bit exhausting.
So I am not in the mood for interaction in real time with other people in all games I play, not just Elite.
Before I played exclusively Open, and will do that again when the time comes and my cmdrs get summoned (looking at you, Loren's Reapers
Once I’ve got my Courier build ready I owe the Colonials a visit, and I’d really like to help push back against the beige. And when I’m ready, I’ll let you know because I think by now you’ll owe me a good ganking (oo-er!) and the least I can do is let you send me to the rebuy screen once or twice