Why play online?

[Adept]

When the game goes live I'm not going to be out to pirate people or needlessly kill. I'll probably sit in Alliance space and play Sheriff by scanning for contraband. Is it fair for me for my efforts to be completely circumvented by toggling to solo?

You will never know about the people playing solo. They will not "toggle" on the spot when you scan them. Most of the ships you scan will be NPCs anyway.

And yes, there is a vast gulf between disconnecting in combat and choosing to play solo. One is super frustrating for the other player(s) involved, one is zero impact on them as they will never even know the player was passing by in a parallel instance.

 

[HDRhineland]

Simple question, simple answer:
I play online because I want to share my experience with others. That may be friends who join my journey through space, that may be other players that I meet and talk to or fight with. For me this is a part of Elite Dangerous.

Technically everything will be 'safer' without other players and it could be easier to get better ships, but I don't play ED to get better stuff than other people. I play it for the overall experience.

(OP: Good question by the way!)

 

[Adept]

IronPERSON

Iron [Derrière] (with British spelling, of course) *bottom

 

[HoshiQaVam]

If your intent is just to trade, then there isn't really much point in open play at all regardless of whether you're a noob or not, beyound the social aspect.

However, if combat is your thing, then I would argue that experiencing PvP early on will teach you more about how to fight in Elite than spending weeks playing solo, and it is far more beneficial to learn some of the basics in a sidewinder for obvious financial reasons.

Even some of the really stupidly obvious tactics, like going in reverse if you're in an infinite loop with an oponent, are things you're less likely to think off vs NPC's, but are incredibly useful tactics to have in your arsenal.

And frankly even things that are helpful outside of combat, like switching off FA and using boost to fly permanently as your ship's boost speed, is something you're unlikely to learn until you see someone else doing it - and you'd be surprised how much time that saves with trading.

 

[StayFrosty]

You are in no position to call it hiding, if people choose to opt out of Open. The measures we've seen so far are a complete joke, and people are flaunting them every day. The PK ganker squads are, if anything, getting more brazen in their behaviour, and the justification is always "I PLAY THE GAME LIKE I WANT! IT'S LEGITIMATE!"

Are you really surprised if people are getting the feeling they want to opt out?

Well then people choose to hide if you must insist.

The "measures taken so far" are what is in fact a crude beta lacking in activities, features and content, and I'm surprised people take it that seriously, and think it's representative of the final game.

It's no surprise some decide to shoot each other to kill time, and instead of complaining, people should just join in the fun. Instead, some insist on being a trader and repeatedly get shot rather than adapt and get after whoever killed them, and then just like you use the terms "playerkilling" and "ganking", which you have yourself proven not to know the meaning of before: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=741675

Have you learned since last time?

And now you're just being really insulting. You should consider that your viewpoint is not the only one, nor the automatically correct one.

A whole lot of people will want to bounty hunt, get involved in wars, assassinate, pirate... They just want to do it with the feeling that they are in the world of Elite, getting involved in the danger and opportunity of a living universe.

What they don't want is having to deal with PK-happy gamers who don't care about the game world, or who coordinate large packs over TS / Mumble to "effect the metagame" or just to "dominate in the game".

***

Guess what? When playing solo, or in a private group the server switching problems just disappear. Entering and exiting SC is smooth, and you can concentrate on whatever you want to do. There won't be anybody at a combat zone who thinks it's fun to try and gank a hollow triangle even if said triangle is on the same side. Nor anybody who will blow up ships on landing platforms because station defences are miscalibrated, and they can get away with it.

Basically, the CoD in space crowd will drive a lot of people into _big_ private groups unless Frontier really clamps down on the mindless PvP.

And now you're projecting. Really hard.

It's all a bogeyman for now, because until we see in the final release actual "griefing", "ganking", and whichever of those words whose meaning you ignore but that you like to use because it sounds "bad", you have no reason not to play in the all group considering those are your problem with it, and no one knows how it'll actually turn out.

Welcome to the all group Adept

 

[Arkantes]

It's no surprise some decide to shoot each other to kill time, and instead of complaining, people should just join in the fun.

Heaven forbid different people might have different opinions on what "fun" is.

 

[Adept]

<snip>

i choose to ignore your baiting, out of respect to the requests of the forum mods in similar situations in the past.

You are misrepresenting my position, my background as a gamer and my character. Good day.

 

[Nemesis-T-Warlock]

Basically, any player worth their salt as a pilot will play exclusively in Ironman mode. The other modes can be thought of as training modes for Ironman. Once you're good enough at stuff in the other modes, you will create a new commander and start from scratch in Ironman mode.

If there is one playing mode that is just built for griefing its Iron Man. Imagine the anguish someone could create by joining in the stock sidewinder and boosting straight into a player that has spent months building their rep, their ship, their bank balance only to see it disappear in an instant because they had no idea this was about to happen.

Makes me think that Iron Man will be full of some pretty scared people running away from any kind of unpredictable human contact.

 

[Theaghan Black]

As i see it, play it solo to you have the best ship in hand filled

At the release this can be different... for my experience in other games AI can be more dangerous than players, so it depends on how much FD want to push the difficulty.

IMO if the "solo player" is never going to surrender and drop his cargo to any AI, then it's a failure.

 

[Armour]

If there is one playing mode that is just built for griefing its Iron Man.

That may be true, but the penalties for doing it should be great:

 

[macdog]

If there is one playing mode that is just built for griefing its Iron Man. Imagine the anguish someone could create by joining in the stock sidewinder and boosting straight into a player that has spent months building their rep, their ship, their bank balance only to see it disappear in an instant because they had no idea this was about to happen.

I don't think it would take too much imagination to prevent this. Disposable ships like a sidey are always going to be a tricky thing to balance effectively though. However, given the ironman difference in this case is the player needs to eject, as long as you can't insta-detroy a ship this way, its not too bad IMO (still not very nice, but not game breaking).

Makes me think that Iron Man will be full of some pretty scared people running away from any kind of unpredictable human contact.

you're probably right to an extent. certainly one would need to be more cautious. How much so is likely to depend on the nature of the person and the mechanics such as the one described above.

 

[macdog]

That may be true, but the penalties for doing it should be great:

thats fine if you can distinguish between a deliberate act and a space accident. the way to address "problems" like this is through effective and balanced mechanics not space-court and ban-hammers.

edit: and thats before we even go into all the other "griefing" actions. A term which is so subjective that the only gaurentee is that you will have a 50 page thread of people arguing over it.

 

[Armour]

thats fine if you can distinguish between a deliberate act and a space accident. the way to address "problems" like this is through effective and balanced mechanics not space-court and ban-hammers.

Simple. There would be no difference between malice and incompetence in how the rules are followed. If someone is causing accidents all over the place due to their own idiocy, they are just as much a danger to others as if they were doing it on purpose. Repeated infractions would result in a ban. I see nothing unfair about that. If a player is not ready for Ironman Mode, either through immaturity or incompetence, more fool them for entering it.

 

[Nemesis-T-Warlock]

Simple. There would be no difference between malice and incompetence in how the rules are followed. If someone is causing accidents all over the place due to their own idiocy, they are just as much a danger to others as if they were doing it on purpose. Repeated infractions would result in a ban. I see nothing unfair about that. If a player is not ready for Ironman Mode, either through immaturity or incompetence, more fool them for entering it.

The point was not 'accidents' it was the potential for deliberate collisions to take out ironman players with the stock sidewinder. This is not practice anyone would want to promote but macdog was talking about the difficulty in differentiating between accidents and deliberate acts.

 

[Armour]

The point was not 'accidents' it was the potential for deliberate collisions to take out ironman players with the stock sidewinder. This is not practice anyone would want to promote but macdog was talking about the difficulty in differentiating between accidents and deliberate acts.

Yes, and I'm saying there's no need to differentiate. If you are in a stock Sidewinder and you take out someone unprovoked in Ironman mode - I would have you automatically on probation. Next time - account suspension from Ironman Mode, no soup for you! You simply can't create an Ironman Commander until the suspension ends.

 

[macdog]

...macdog was talking about the difficulty in differentiating between accidents and deliberate acts.

I was indeed! And as is always the case with subjective/non-mechanics driven "rules" you have to beware of the "careful what you wish for" angle. If for example, there was a no tolerance for ramming rule (and we could try and "prove" it by seeing who had boost enabled) the "griefers" would simply look for ways to dash in front of players boosting (maybe when exiting a station) resulting in the victim being banned! Far worse than loosing a ship IMO.

I admit, non-mechanics driven rules are often unavoidable, but my point is they should be last resort, not first choice due to the issues I highlighted. In some cases, doing nothing might be the best option.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Yes, and I'm saying there's no need to differentiate. If you are in a stock Sidewinder and you take out someone unprovoked in Ironman mode - I would have you automatically on probation. Next time - account suspension from Ironman Mode, no soup for you! You simply can't create an Ironman Commander until the suspension ends.

Determining which is the rammer and which the rammed in a ramming incident may be harder than it first appears....

So, both players would have to be dealt with.

 

[Nemesis-T-Warlock]

unprovoked

Right there. Please describe the dynamics that FD would need to implement in order to identify this.

Also, by this point the iron man player is dead.

 

[Armour]

I was indeed! And as is always the case with subjective/non-mechanics driven "rules" you have to beware of the "careful what you wish for" angle. If for example, there was a no tolerance for ramming rule (and we could try and "prove" it by seeing who had boost enabled) the "griefers" would simply look for ways to dash in front of players boosting (maybe when exiting a station) resulting in the victim being banned! Far worse than loosing a ship IMO.

I admit, non-mechanics driven rules are often unavoidable, but my point is they should be last resort, not first choice due to the issues I highlighted. In some cases, doing nothing might be the best option.

Okay, so there should be an appeal process. Frontier could investigate. Time wasters who repeatedly submit appeals that don't have a hope in hell of succeeding should be banned from the mode, not suspended.

There are a lot of ways you could analyse such situations and determine culpability. For example, I would hazard a guess that the commanders used by such idiots would usually have a lot less play time than a real player. Also, a player that manages to get rammed up the tailpipe repeatedly is probably asking for it. (That came out badly).

 

[macdog]

Okay, so there should be an appeal process. Frontier could investigate. Time wasters who repeatedly submit appeals that don't have a hope in hell of succeeding should be banned from the mode, not suspended.

There are a lot of ways you could analyse such situations and determine culpability. For example, I would hazard a guess that the commanders used by such idiots would usually have a lot less play time than a real player. Also, a player that manages to get rammed up the tailpipe repeatedly is probably asking for it. (That came out badly).

wouldn't you agree that if this behaviour could be prevented by mechanics (either by making it hard to do, limiting the incentive or increasing the disincentive - in-game). This would be a better option before going down the space-court route?