PvP Why PvP is not popular in Elite Dangerous?

[Mike Reacher]

I'm sure it does. Unless you're running 5D unengineered thrusters on your Python though, the only reason you're having it out with three Anacondas to begin with is because you decided to. Sure you might lose that fight but to simply avoid loosing your ship, all you had to do is go 4-2-0 and press boost twice.

That's my point. We actually create the risks for ourselves.

Not sure about that. Annie number one attacks me. Number 2 hovers close while Moi tries to overcome number 1 and his SLF.
If the feds turn up, we can still fight 'em off, but if not, and Annie number 1 departs in a cloud of bits, number 2 then attacks. If I'm lucky, I can do him in. If not, then I boost towards my target. Run away in other words.
Of course I will get interdicted again but if I am sick of the fight I evade the interdiction.

edit. I'm running ENGINEERED 5A thrusters.

Ok ... another of course ...... Annie number 2 sometimes joins in and ..... dammit ..... 2 good NPCs and 2 SLFs soon hunt me away from the action.
What the heck. Just taking a long winded comment to say the NPCs started this. Not me. Playing trader is not creating anything. Just gaming along.

Hoo boy. Just made 5 million trading and in open. Not one NPC in sight.

 

[Red Anders]

Not sure about that. Annie number one attacks me. Number 2 hovers close while Moi tries to overcome number 1 and his SLF.
If the feds turn up, we can still fight 'em off, but if not, and Annie number 1 departs in a cloud of bits, number 2 then attacks. If I'm lucky, I can do him in. If not, then I boost towards my target. Run away in other words.
Of course I will get interdicted again but if I am sick of the fight I evade the interdiction.

edit. I'm running ENGINEERED 5A thrusters.

Ok ... another of course ...... Annie number 2 sometimes joins in and ..... dammit ..... 2 good NPCs and 2 SLFs soon hunt me away from the action.
What the heck. Just taking a long winded comment to say the NPCs started this. Not me. Playing trader is not creating anything. Just gaming along.

Hoo boy. Just made 5 million trading and in open. Not one NPC in sight.

Yeah I was assuming you were interdicted rather than having pulled them out of supercruise for a laugh. What I meant though is that you chose to get into the fight at the point of interdiction. I run engineered 7A thrusters on my passenger Python which will see it do 460 with a full load; as I said it has no weapons but none are needed because no npc that can catch it has a hope in hell of killing it before I either low or high wake out depending on the circumstances.

If I was in my more general purpose mission Python though, which is fully armed and engineered, I'd kick snot out of them.

That's without getting into the fact that since they changed the interdiction minigame to be more friendly to alternative control methods gamepads, pretty much all you need to do is get on the target once and then just roll continuously.

 

[kofeyh]

See also: Multicrew. You're spot on; both of them suffer from being locked in a vicious circle of disinterest and relatively inoffensive failure.

The great irony, is powerplay actually provides a framework and structure for PVP. Actual reasons for doing. For undermining and knocking out the legs of the 'bad guys' or equally trying to storm their hold (or hold the line). Literally the very thing people keep saying "if only PVP wasn't just a gank fest and had some structure?!" - but, as soon as Frontier go near powerplay as an entity with respect to C&P to try and ensure it remains viable - the "how dare you support pvp!?" incredulity kicks in.

This time round, Frontier didn't even bother; in goes a ton of clamp-down on 'bad' with zero contextual relevance to how or why; ATC will roll in on underminers and so on. Bounties will be excessive. Marginalising the entire thing really. I'm sure people will persist, but my appetite for it, given the PF bounty sort of got worked out, is pretty much zero as of 3.0. It was something I intended to maintain rating 5 for.

Now? It's just not a constructive use of in-game time. I didn't think it was possible for Frontier to eject even more people from PP; oh well. So here we go again; dropping it for the third, and likely last, time.

I have no idea what the solution is. Maybe it's just the inevitability of their shotgun approach, and the propensity to try and change too much at once, rather than just knuckling down on a sub-set of features and just making them shine. The results for PVP, are just a symptom of what has happened elsewhere. What's left, is what people have to work with. It's any wonder it's not worked out well.

Mediocrity through too much ground covered, in too short a time, without the polish we all know they are capable of when they truly focus.

 

[Oopsie Daisy]

I originally bought ED to explore and 'marvel at the wonders of the galaxy' yada yada. I did that and soon discovered that there was not much to marvel at; the ED galaxy is a bland, repetitive, sterile place. Most everything fun to see I can see in the bubble (with a very few certain other exceptions). So at that point ED became "pew pew". I am pretty sure I am not alone with my sentiments and others have taken things even farther and decided to kill other players.

 

[relayer]

I'm not even getting into the fact that the primary method by which control of the galaxy and its resources is played out in the 3300s is supposedly delivering leaflets.

Had to +1 you for this, ya. When I found out how PP really worked, I was all... wut.

 

[kofeyh]

I originally bought ED to explore and 'marvel at the wonders of the galaxy' yada yada. I did that and soon discovered that there was not much to marvel at; the ED galaxy is a bland, repetitive, sterile place. Most everything fun to see I can see in the bubble (with a very few certain other exceptions). So at that point ED became "pew pew". I am pretty sure I am not alone with my sentiments and others have taken things even farther and decided to kill other players.

Boredom leads to idle hands. Everyone, eventually, gravitates to something that one can connect to. Some people just check out and go explore, pretty much indefinitely, some rip into the BGS and micromanage their way to glory. Others realise that the only real challenge at this point, is each other.

And some? They just hunt the rest. Because the developer thought this would be fine as-is, probably didn't think people would really shoot at each other "that much" (despite adding just about every weapon archetype one could think of) and then had no plan b, when it became evident that yes, yes people will shoot at other people just a whole lot. I think Frontier sort of ran from that perhaps having no idea how to at least approach it.

Engineers was the single biggest example of the developer having absolutely no concept of player engagement; or what people had been doing for two+ years. They were so proud of it too. And there was genuinely so much effort put into it; it just was hilariously out of step with the entire game concept. PVP, and where that sits, is ultimately just one of the many such results.

These things have their place; like anything, it's just execution. That's really the hard part.

Frontier could actually address a lot of issues and fundamentally change the game for the better; but they need to accept their mistakes and start focusing on key areas, rather than a little bit of everything. This "not intended" blanket response is old. It's intended; it's just not sane. Stop doing that. There's a world of feedback, Frontier just has to get to the point where they decide either the game is for them - or the players.

Everyone has their limit. The longer this drags on, the more that will discover it and either just reduce their hour count, or move on. This isn't some threat. It's just what happens over time when games really just don't know what they are, or who they are for. There's ample example of this happening elsewhere. Maybe they just need that scare, that realisation, before things will turn around? Maybe it just has to get way worse, before it gets better.

I fundamentally still believe Frontier has an amazing game that could really become an utter phenomenon. And they are an incredibly talented team; they're just going to take the hard road to get there, I guess.

Having started playing Warframe recently; I can see so very many parallels. Different game, different genre, yes. But they found the working combination, and ran with it; I am quite sure there were some very dark times for the developer as their player base withered. Warframe was truly awful early on, it's an amazing experience for what it offers now, though. The developer has lavished on it, and more importantly, on the people it was built for. They know their people, and it shows.

Frontier are a great team, who made some mistakes, aren't really in-step with the player base, and the game doesn't really know what is. I think they'll find a way. Just as Digital Extremes did. And I really hope I'm still playing when that happens. Because it will be amazing when it happens. When they know their people, it will equally show.

 

[V'larr]

See also: Multicrew. You're spot on; both of them suffer from being locked in a vicious circle of disinterest and relatively inoffensive failure.

I don't know, the fact that any kind of wing/crew action means my XP gain is reduced by 50% or worse seems pretty offensive to me....

 

[relayer]

It doesn't lead to complacency...as an expectation that the elite Universe is consistent IE I'll be attacked if I give other a REASON to attack me...rather than I'll be attacked because I'm a PC not an NPC..because YOU KNOW...Salt

People talk about "consistency" but... take the Firefly universe (because they openly have the "faction" Reavers). The galaxy is kind of tattered, but still you aren't set upon by Reavers almost everywhere (of note) you need to be. The Reavers are also not numerous, due to their... lifestyle. They're pretty much confined to the crumbly, anarchic edges of human space.

The odds of you being able to go into core systems and start reaving without rousing swift opposition either by military or a band-together alliance pro tem are pretty small.

This is what I think Braben means by "meaningful PvP." There's a small subset who wish to make their... career choice more important than it is. It's statistically rare; certainly outnumbered by the bulk of humankind in their general careers of trading, mining, exploring, racing & etc.

I think it's just another symptom of not really getting what Elite has always been - a space sim where you not only aren't the Hero, you're an insignificant bag of water & chemicals to the 'Verse. I guess that drives some players nuts *shrug*

 

[Mohrgan]

I think it's just another symptom of not really getting what Elite has always been - a space sim where you not only aren't the Hero, you're an insignificant bag of water & chemicals to the 'Verse. I guess that drives some players nuts *shrug*

Besides flying space ships, this is my favorite part of Elite. I don't have a path to glory. Or, more to the point, I don't have to share a path to glory with all the other heroes out there.

 

[kofeyh]

I think it's just another symptom of not really getting what Elite has always been - a space sim where you not only aren't the Hero, you're an insignificant bag of water & chemicals to the 'Verse. I guess that drives some players nuts *shrug*

Elite doesn't put the player at the center of attention. The Universe and BGS are. Because that's what drove David Braben to reintroduce the game in the first place. He finally had access to the technology to build the Elite he always wanted. We, humble water bags that shuffle about, merely helped fund that endeavour. David ostensibly put up with us being there, to get what he wanted. And I think it's pretty clear he's mostly moved on.

It's Sandy, really, that's had to drive a lot of this. Guy gets a caning for it. And yet he goes to work, every day, to try and make a game that actually appeals to players and gives us something to do. The entire team does. It's funny, because this comes as a shock to a lot of players; the presumption was that this was always the other way around. That Sandy is the bad cop.

But when you actually listen and watch David when he is talking about Elite; we, the roving bags of water, aren't his focus. We never were. The game simply just reflects that. This isn't ostensibly a bad thing; on the contrary. But without direction, a lot of players will stumble. And I think that dynamic, is where a lot of the more confrontational debate can stem from. Particularly over functions such as PVP.

 

[Kusarii]

#1 reason recently why I converted most of my PvP ships to PvE is Combat Logging. I am not the best pilot by any means but it gets kinda discouraging when your duking it out and as soon as your opponent either gets his shields knocked down or realizes your not in a sidewinder they simply log out for a bit and come back. Some say it should not matter to me it does since its like having a fist fight and the guy gets upset he got smacked lightly in the face and calls it quits even though he instigated it. I also get people dont want to see a 50 million+ rebuy on their Cutter or Corvette but heres a thought... use other ships if you want to PvP maybe? They are never going to be able to fix CLs since I hear this game is Client side so... whats the point?

 

[jasonbirder]

The system you're describing doesn't exist, so there's no point in arguing about it. FDev have clearly set up security in a way that they like. Go to a Hi-RES in a high sec system and there's still pirates. The game doesn't conform to your idea of it.

But if the SYSTEM you're describing DID exist...then the Elite Universe as we recognise it WOULDN'T Exist at all would it? If every single ship travelling between systems carrying essential food/raw material resources/finished goods...was likely to be attacked by an overwhelmingly powerful opponent and find themselves in an instant life/death situation...then there wouldn't be any trade...it wouldn't be profitable would it? The Risk/Reward benefits of travel/trade wouldn't add up in a world in which interdiction/mass lock/interception by G5 Engineered ships was a constant threat...so NO systems which weren't essentially self-supporting...No distant stations along way from any Terraformed World...No traffic etc etc...

You don't have to have a PvP build, you just need to put a shield with decent strength on your ship and have the SKILL to escape. It's not hard. I could teach you to escape in less than an hour with a nearly stock ship.

I'd argue that that was 100% true PRE Engineers...but NOW even the standard evasion tactics (flip 180, boost past, cool down, wake out - throwing in constant changing vector in all 3 dimensions during the cool down phase) isn't 100% effective when you're hit by Module Malfunctioning, FSD Disrupting or Thermal effect weapons...but that's BESIDES the point isn't it?

It absolutely leads to complacency because you can actually fly around in a shieldless T7 in solo and face no real threat from the NPCs. That's ridiculous.

What's complacent about flying around in a ship carrying No cargo, not affiliated to any powerplay faction, not running any opposed missions and having no wanted status/bounty...expecting NOT to get attacked? That seems perfectly logical to me...why would anyone attack a ship in that situation?

You are the exact person I'm talking about in that post, btw. Too risk averse and too complacent in a ship that faces literally no danger from anything OTHER than another player.

What? The kind of person NOT risk averse...but AVERSE to being targeted by social inadequates because I'm a HOLLOW square...No-ones averse to getting attacked GENUINELY if there's a REASON for it...and if you're giving out a REASON for it...you'll be READY for it...expecting it and preparing for it...but being targetted because you're hollow not solid is ridiculous and there's no sense in defending it...

Give me ONE reason why a CMDR would target Players not NPCs? Tell me when the last time you attacked a clean, empty, unarmed, non-PP, none-mission target NPC was?

 

[MarkAusten]

If you're engineered and can actually fly, no NPC in this game is a threat outside of the Thargoids, and they're only a threat because they have special weapons, not because they can fly better than you.

Ah, see that's a problem right there. Not all of us are super-duper pilots like you and as such the NPCs are sufficiently difficult to fight to make it interesting for us.

[EDIT] I run away since I don't mount weapons. What's the point? I can't fight with them anyway

 

[AbsinthSvK]

So what?
If people choose to play alone it's their choice within the game mechanic(s) provided.

i was talk about unnecessary dividing players into modes in ONLINE game, one coexisting mode should be nice. Anyway pointless to talk about it, already plenty of examples and counter examples in this thread ...

 

[MarkAusten]

i was talk about unnecessary dividing players into modes in ONLINE game, one coexisting mode should be nice. Anyway pointless to talk about it, already plenty of examples and counter examples in this thread ...

The problem is right there in your reply. Coexisting. That just doesn't seem to be the case. Not that I'd know since I am a Soloist.

I am a Soloist because I do not want to play with other people ever. Not now, not in the past nor in the future. Nothing to do with 'hating' PvP, just total disinterest.

So I would say that you are incorrect and the division into modes is totally necessary.

I'm not the only one who thinks that way either, which is nice for me.

 

[Han_Zen]

Elite doesn't put the player at the center of attention. The Universe and BGS are. Because that's what drove David Braben to reintroduce the game in the first place. He finally had access to the technology to build the Elite he always wanted. We, humble water bags that shuffle about, merely helped fund that endeavour. David ostensibly put up with us being there, to get what he wanted. And I think it's pretty clear he's mostly moved on.

It's Sandy, really, that's had to drive a lot of this. Guy gets a caning for it. And yet he goes to work, every day, to try and make a game that actually appeals to players and gives us something to do. The entire team does. It's funny, because this comes as a shock to a lot of players; the presumption was that this was always the other way around. That Sandy is the bad cop.

But when you actually listen and watch David when he is talking about Elite; we, the roving bags of water, aren't his focus. We never were. The game simply just reflects that. This isn't ostensibly a bad thing; on the contrary. But without direction, a lot of players will stumble. And I think that dynamic, is where a lot of the more confrontational debate can stem from. Particularly over functions such as PVP.

I think ED has gone way to far in pleasing the 'Inner Hero' in the players. We are given unique opportunities, just because we are members of the Pilots federation.

We shouldn't have access to better ships than navies. We shouldn't be able to go anywhere without worrying about what the local factions think of us.

More thinking, less building.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

What (some of) the PvPers don't get. In my game there are not players and NPCs. There are Members of my faction (the pilots federation) and members of other factions. In a way we are like made men in the mafia. In the mafia, people do not take out members of their own family without authorisation from the boss without serious consequences. IF FD want me to take PvP seriously they need to weave it into the game. The framework is there, the faction Dark Wheel but at the moment at least FD don't seem to have it as a priority. My worry is, Sandro has shown in the past the lore is not his forte that was more a Michael Brookes thing and he has gone..... so as we go on down the line the game is getting further from the consistent sci fi game with heavy enphasis on the science, politics and economy, and more towards generic space shooter.

to some this would be a good thing, to me a disaster.

SJA is also a published author and MB is still on site... so I *hope* there is still a strong input from the more story orientated devs at Frontier

 

[Robert Maynard]

i was talk about unnecessary dividing players into modes in ONLINE game, one coexisting mode should be nice. Anyway pointless to talk about it, already plenty of examples and counter examples in this thread ...

There is no peaceful co-existence between PvP and PvE players - Open has always been a testament to that....

 

[Mike Reacher]

Yeah I was assuming you were interdicted rather than having pulled them out of supercruise for a laugh. What I meant though is that you chose to get into the fight at the point of interdiction. I run engineered 7A thrusters on my passenger Python which will see it do 460 with a full load; as I said it has no weapons but none are needed because no npc that can catch it has a hope in hell of killing it before I either low or high wake out depending on the circumstances.

If I was in my more general purpose mission Python though, which is fully armed and engineered, I'd kick snot out of them.

That's without getting into the fact that since they changed the interdiction minigame to be more friendly to alternative control methods gamepads, pretty much all you need to do is get on the target once and then just roll continuously.

Sorry about the misconception!
I don't attack anything, except for the occasional kill a terrorist please.
I was interdicted. I fight the interdicters if i can. I usually win, but if there are too many stripping my paint I will run.

 

[Han_Zen]

There is no peaceful co-existence between PvP and PvE players - Open has always been a testament to that....

That's a bit subjective. My commander has 3.5 years without being killed or killing another PF member. Most of that time has been spent in open.

Unless you present your self as a wounded gnu, the lions rarely attack.

PvP ganker types are like zombies. You need an escape plan that you are comfortable with.

The escape plan can be based on speed, defense/hi-wake or simply avoiding interdiction or infested systems.

There are plenty on videos showing the submit, boost towards attacker and hi-wake routine. Few mention that this maneuver works in super cruise as well. If you don't allow hollow triangles in your rear sector, you don't get interdicted and have plenty of time to hi-wake.

It's all about acknowledging that there are dangerous players in open. If you do, they can provide an extra element of challenge.

On days I want a zombie free environment, I use PG.

It's a win win for me.