Why show players & NPC's differently?

[steveme]

Should the scanner display all ships the same and not differentiate between human and NPC?

Obviously, system defence forces would be a give away, but if the remaining NPC ships were prefixed with CMDR then wouldn't that add to the immersion?

Any scanner contact could be either a player or AI NPC - how would that affect your approach to the game?

Perhaps you'd be a bit more cautious about that Asp refuelling at the star, or why there's a Cobra seemingly flying in big loops. Is it flown by an experienced player who's looking for another victim? or a slightly more predictable NPC?


Would the game be better if players and AI were indistinguishable?

 

[adoredtv]

It's an interesting idea but what about talking to people...

 

[Veldryn]

I want to know who's human, because they don't behave like bots. You'd better keep an eye on them, even if you're not Talking/Fighting/Avoiding/Whatever

It would be too easy for a hidden human to sneak behind you an unleash their fire when you least expect it. And the time you do a 180° turn, you're dead.

At least, as they appear on the scanner, you know you must be on your guards.

 

[KronenBrg]

I'd spend my entire evening flying around one sector of space saying "hi!" to everyone and wondering why no one replied! No thanks!

 

[Yaffle]

This from Sandro, lead designer, may interest, but note how old it is (May 2014).

The talk about the transponder is the pertinent part.

Hello Folk!

Gosh, I don't think I've ever seen my name crop up so many times in a thread!

CAVEAT: do not expect an amazing solution, or even a confirmed direction. The truth is, I'm not sure there is one, and even if there is it will have to wait until after Alpha 4.

However, that being said, I do find this discussion very interesting (and sometimes a bit baffling, but hey - that's OK) and I wanted to make a couple of comments whilst I have a quick break.

(DDF folk, be warned, there may be some repetition here from that forum thread).

It seems there are at least three very distinct issues swimming through these murky waters:

1. The ability to switch between private groups and the "All players" group makes the game unfair.

2. ID requirements/fog of war are unnecessary barriers preventing players from playing together.

3. It's unfair to be magically singled out just because you're a human and not some lines of code.

Now, as far as I am concerned, and most of you guys and gals seem to agree, all three of these concerns are valid. No-one is more right or more wrong than anyone else; these concerns are simply subjective standpoints.

So I'm a little confused by the unyielding stances being adopted - why not have another read of the previous sentence. The point i'm trying to make is that I don't think advocates of one side are really going to persuade the other - and there's been some damn fine (and damn pleasant - thanks!) debate from both.

So what are we left with? To my mind, the decision is going to be about choosing one group over the other, or try to get a compromise. This then, is why in the DDF thread I was a mild advocate of an opt-in transponder mechanism. Just for the record, here's a brief run down:

* By default, no human players can be mechanically identified and labelled as such. There is no additional camouflage either - if you reveal that you're a human player or someone works it out, you can't rub this knowledge out.

* You can turn on a transponder signal in your ship. All players piloting transponder on ships always instantly know that each other are human. This device does not offer any additional detection capabilities - you still need to be able to detect the other player's ship as normal.

* If you are in a wing (a group of allied players) any member turning on the transponder turns it on for all members of the wing.

* Once you have turned on the transponder, turning it off has no effect on ships that have already made use of the information - in the current location. The knowledge would likely only reset once that particular session had collapsed (no one present in the locale).

Right, so why did I favour this? Because I think it offers *something* to both sides in this thread. Players who purport to want to have social/game play interaction will turn their transponder on. This doesn't paint a target on them, because only fellow transponder users will see them as human, and they will be visible as human in return.

Players that want to keep the mystery keep their transponder off. They will never know who's real beyond what they can discern from ship actions.

The win for me though is the fact that both sets of people are in the same space. They can still interact - nothing stops that. Sure, either side can be sore about the fact that not everyone is playing the game exactly the same as them. But I constantly see comments like "splitting the user base is bad!" and "we want to player together!" - and well, this would be happening. Importantly, it would be happening in a relatively fair way.

And this is important, because as far as I can see, taking these thoughts into account, the only folk that presumably would take real umbrage at this system would be those that want to detect other humans for player versus activities, to attack them in some manner. Before anyone jumps on me, let me state that there's nothing wrong with this desire - there's nothing wrong with player verus player at all.

But the bottom line here *seems* to be twofold:

1. Player versus player is still completely viable, just a bit more work sometimes, and
2. If a player doesn't want to be identified, by default you are being slightly adversarial in wanting them not to have the choice. If you want to socialise, you accept that not everyone will, turn on the transponder and meet all the other players that do (and you can freely replace the word "socialise" with any player-to-player interaction). Folk play the game the way they want to play the game. If not everyone wants to player the same way as you, forcing them to is equally as likely to stop them player as change their mind.

Of course, anyone who hasn't yet fallen asleep will note that I have not addressed issue number one: the concept of private and "all player" groups. that's because I think it's a big enough issue to stand on it's own, and just complicates matters when it's brought into this discussion (though I accept that it shares many of the same concepts). what a cop out eh? Sorry, just right now I just don't have enough steam in my boiler to take that one on!

And just to be absolutely clear: my personal preference would be to never truly know who was human with the following exceptions: player friends formed through an out of game world friend system could always be visible as such, and players in game could mechanically reveal their human nature to specific targets: both of these features would help towards social gaming in a safe and controlled manner where both parties consensually agreed to break immersion for the benefit of multiplayer interactions (and both would be reversible). This stance is similar but not identical to the transponder option.

The reason I don't advocate it as the right way is simply because it is less fair, favouring one camp over the other. That's not necessarily an issue, but in this particular case I feel the improvement I perceive it would offer to the game is less than the penalty of putting off more folk even more vehemently. That's just my perception mind.

Oh, and a final point to send you all back to sleep: although I make no mention of it in this discussion (because I think it simply confuses and complicates the debate) I want to state clearly that we certainly want to introduce game play events and mechnisms that help draw players together and let them work together (and against each other).

Right, hope you find that worth reading! Remember it's just all opinion, you don't have to agree with me but please, spread the love, not the hate! Peace out!

 

[Cody]

This is worth reading too.

 

[Samu]

The more the game turns into a single-player experience the faster it will die, is my humble opinion. If you think the game currently has loads of things to do for just one person, think of how many more things it would have for groups of people.

 

[anikaiful]

NPC shouldn't be showing any different in scanners than PCs.

 

[DaveB]

My player interactions have all been positive, even the few that ended in combat. (that's not many - I've only killed a couple of players and had to run for my life from one less than 5 times, failing to do so and ending up in the escape capsule only once) I've been pirated plenty of times ("real" pirates) and randomly attacked twice. That's a tiny minority of the times I've met other players. Most of the time, if we interact at all we talk, maybe help each other out a bit. Of course I'm wary when I see a hollow blip but that's just common sense - I'm not assuming the other guy wants to shoot me, just aware of the fact that he might.

I like being able to talk to folks, and my knowledge that another ship is piloted by a human can be to their advantage too. Case in point, last night I was plinking wanteds by a nav beacon and I noticed a hollow triangle. This guy was in a sidey and obviously having fun. He had an elite-ranked crook in a Cobra in his sights and was doing his best to claim the bounty. I joined in on the side of the cmdr. Now, if he'd been a solid blip I'd have just kept unloading my asps weapons until the target popped, claiming the bounty for myself. As it was, when the cobra was down below 10% hull I commed him "Your bird, I wont steal your kill" and held my fire. We ended up chatting back and forth as we chased down targets, up to the point that I sent my last message "I've fried too many crooks from the local faction and aggro'd the cops. time for me to leave" and SC-ed out of there before the fed 'conda that was shooting at me could strip my shields.

Now if we didn't know each other were human, he'd be grumbling about kill-stealing NPCs and I'd have gone on my merry way unaware that I had just negatively impacted someone elses fun in the game.

 

[TUXER]

I say no.

Its an interesting design choice and I would like to see how it pans out in the long run

 

[deMangler]

I thought it had been discussed heavily during early design. It was clear, it seemed that there would be an option to turn on a transponder if you wanted to be identified as a player (or member of the pilots federation) - If you did not have your transponder on you would not be identified. Also you would only be able to see other players identified as such if they had their transponders on if yours was on.
I thought this was a neat way of doing it and I have not heard that this feature has been cancelled. So I expect it is on the list of features they have not had time to implement at release, like multiple commanders, Iron-man, persistent NPC's, player wings etc. This game will be brilliant when more of those features are in.

 

[BigBadB]

I need an option in the poll that combines the first and second choices, or allows me to vote for both of them.

 

[Ogidch]

I think this could be an interesting idea, you never know if that wanted ship is going to hit back harder than you thought.

 

[Soulside Journey]

I don't see a reason for change as long as solo mode exists.
If you don't want to interact with people - play solo.

You can't talk to bots, and fighting them isn't even a tenth of the fun fighting a real person, so really, what good would such a change do?

 

[TargetLost]

It's a good point because if you think about the conflict zones:
If there are players in there than your only concentration is on them. PvP with some disturbing NPC's. If there were 100 people on each side..say Mass PvP than this could make fun however there will never be that many so it will be a few vs a few and pretty soon one side will be lonely in the instance because if you are 1vs 5 or 6 than it becomes pointless to even go there in open play. So in this case I whished there were an anonymous PvP becasue honestly I eighter want Mass PvP or a enjoy the PvE conflict zone with 100 NPC's on each side. But what I don't like is unbalanced few player PvP. PvP should always be balanced or it's rubish in my opinion.

 

[shrinkshooter]

The difference between and NPC and a player are far, far too vast to "disguise" them as all the same. That would especially hurt pirates, though I've never pirated or been pirated, since NPCs carry mostly junk. Players are also generally much more dangerous than NPCs. Additionally, there are far too few encounters with players in my experience to warrant doing this. It would drop player interaction to virtually zero where I am, unless the transponder idea is implemented...and even then, it's still going to be used from some people to "hide" from player bounty hunters or pirates.

 

[Riepah]

Not sure what to vote.

Currently, I play Solo, but that won't always be the case. I think keeping players distinguishable from NPCs is a good thing, though. If you see a player, you'll know it may make sense to initiate interaction of any sort, or at least keep an eye on them. Someone getting the jump on you because you thought they're just another brainless AI wouldn't be fun either, I suspect. And from what I heard about Open, making players look like NPCs would only lead to people meeting even fewer players, because they'd just fly past each other without realizing they're both alive.
Suggesting that there should be no way to distinguish an actual threat from cannon fodder would also imply that the whole "Elite/Competent/Mostly Harmless" ranking you can see in a normal scan shouldn't be there.

If I could, I'd multiple-choice vote 1, 2 and 4. Since I can't, I'll refrain from voting.

 

[anikaiful]

Not sure what to vote.

Currently, I play Solo, but that won't always be the case. I think keeping players distinguishable from NPCs is a good thing, though. If you see a player, you'll know it may make sense to initiate interaction of any sort, or at least keep an eye on them. Someone getting the jump on you because you thought they're just another brainless AI wouldn't be fun either, I suspect. And from what I heard about Open, making players look like NPCs would only lead to people meeting even fewer players, because they'd just fly past each other without realizing they're both alive.
Suggesting that there should be no way to distinguish an actual threat from cannon fodder would also imply that the whole "Elite/Competent/Mostly Harmless" ranking you can see in a normal scan shouldn't be there.

If I could, I'd multiple-choice vote 1, 2 and 4. Since I can't, I'll refrain from voting.

Hmm, good points - but if there was an -option- to "hide PCs" (personal option, to hide myself from seeing PCs as PCs - not changing how they see me), I'd use that - I frankly don't care if someone who interdicts me and I shoot at is NPC or PC - end result's the sorry same for them anyhow.

 

[Zeonix]

Everyone who constantly posts about the game being called Elite: Dangerous and not Elite: Handholding or whatever should be voting for there to be no difference in the way humans and NPCs are displayed. After all, it'd be more realistic.

Personally, I don't care one way or the other. Being able to differentiate between human and npc for the purpose of chatting is nice, though.

 

[shrinkshooter]

Everyone who constantly posts about the game being called Elite: Dangerous and not Elite: Handholding or whatever should be voting for there to be no difference in the way humans and NPCs are displayed. After all, it'd be more realistic.

Actually, you would expect the opposite. Encounters with players are more engaging, dynamic, and possibly challenging and dangerous, none of which exist with NPCs, and having everything look the same would remove that to a large degree. It would make it more like Elite: handholding, not less.