WHY!?

[Mrc_NorthEast]

My reasons for not flying in Open, having done it exactly once, when a very new pilot in an engineer system... you know the ending.

1) Is it wastes our time. Most of us do not have alot of time to waste, credits are easy to get imho, time is not
2) What do I gain by being in Open? Nothing, no extra reward or anything for the increased risk of the gankers, who imho are not usually involved in Power Play or the BGS
3) Elite has a crap, crime and punishment system. A working, valid crime and punishment system with harsh penalties to discourage behaviors Fdev or the playerbase deem offensive is needed. IE I mean really bad penalties, millions/billions in Fines, loss of ships, sitting in a detention center for a week of in game time, etc
4) The security system in Elite is pathetic. Even in high security systems. Whatever is going to happen will be over within 5 secs - 1 minute, and security will not be there in the same timeframe. This also needs to be fixed
5) No galaxy wide Spec Ops level group of NPC's or pilots federation group of players hunting and destroying anyone who is wanted. If all players (gankers, BGS'ers, PP'ers, etc) had to be looking over their shoulder as a deterrent to not caring about any fines, bounties or notoriety that they have. This needs to be fixed as well

 

[aristide torchia]

Call it risk aversion, then. People in this community are, by and large, typically very risk averse. They don't want to risk the loss of their ship/credits/time/data/what have you/etc. This game certainly instills risk aversion, otherwise Open would be far more populous. Is it fear like fear of a bear mauling you in the woods? No, but it's fear in the sense that people are worried that if they fly in Open they take on risk of loss of something, so they don't do it.

They're free to do it, fine by me (some people need to not be in Open due to risk taking tendencies even), but I'm also not wrong in noticing the population trends, either. Been this way basically since Elite came about as far as I can tell.

That's exactly what it is and it is funny as hell in its own rights.

Someone somewhere earlier in this thread had said that the only thing that gangers achieve is reduction in the 'efficiency' of completing community goals.

I thought that was spot on nail on the head… the efficiency!

The efficiency of hauling make-believe units of nothing in a straight line must be upkept, else the sacred bar of completion will not fill as quickly as possible and the vengeful god of statistics and accounting will get mad.

Reminds me of a famous game design quote: "given the opportunity, players will edit the fun out of their game." Between the balancing of basic game rules, engineering, ant-hive type community goals and utter lack of imaginative capacity betrayed by what appears to be majority of Elite's players, that indeed appears to be the case.

 

[Rubbernuke]

discourage behaviors Fdev or the playerbase deem offensive

The thing is: killing is not wrong, its just an outcome. You do have the ability to avoid nearly all hassle in Open via ship choice, engineering, skills, location, time.

5) No galaxy wide Spec Ops level group of NPC's or pilots federation group of players hunting and destroying anyone who is wanted. If all players (gankers, BGS'ers, PP'ers, etc) had to be looking over their shoulder as a deterrent to not caring about any fines, bounties or notoriety that they have. This needs to be fixed as well

The simplest first step is something like this:

At notoriety 10, each full NPC / player scan spawns an ATR vessel

A half though out idea, but: If a player is at notoriety 10, they have to be very careful about being scanned by random ships, security or other players as if they are, an ATR security vessel drops in to hassle them. The handwavium being that a scan is like a sighting of you thats disseminated...

forums.frontier.co.uk

The simple fact is though, if your ship can survive a few minutes to HW you can survive 90% of all random attacks.

2) What do I gain by being in Open? Nothing, no extra reward or anything for the increased risk of the gankers, who imho are not usually involved in Power Play or the BGS

FD did talk about (and might with PP V2) have a bonus for open.

That's exactly what it is and it is funny as hell in its own rights.

Someone somewhere earlier in this thread had said that the only thing that gangers achieve is reduction in the 'efficiency' of completing community goals.

I thought that was spot on nail on the head… the efficiency!

The efficiency of hauling make-believe units of nothing in a straight line must be upkept, else the sacred bar of completion will not fill as quickly as possible and the vengeful god of statistics and accounting will get mad.

Reminds me of a famous game design quote: "given the opportunity, players will edit the fun out of their game." Between the balancing of basic game rules, engineering, ant-hive type community goals and utter lack of imaginative capacity betrayed by what appears to be majority of Elite's players, that indeed appears to be the case.

This is why in features such as PP V2 having an effective opposition is so important.

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

The thing is: killing is not wrong, its just an outcome. You do have the ability to avoid nearly all hassle in Open via ship choice, engineering, skills, location, time.

Agreed. I did not know that in the beginning, but I do now. And yes PP 2.0 will hopefully change things up for the better. We shall see what Fdev can deliver

 

[Robert Maynard]

Reminds me of a famous game design quote: "given the opportunity, players will edit the fun out of their game." Between the balancing of basic game rules, engineering, ant-hive type community goals and utter lack of imaginative capacity betrayed by what appears to be majority of Elite's players, that indeed appears to be the case.

Which very much depends on whether players find PvP to be fun - which cannot be said of all players.

.... and players prioritise their own fun, not the fun of others.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

My reasons for not flying in Open, having done it exactly once, when a very new pilot in an engineer system... you know the ending.

1) Is it wastes our time. Most of us do not have alot of time to waste, credits are easy to get imho, time is not
2) What do I gain by being in Open? Nothing, no extra reward or anything for the increased risk of the gankers, who imho are not usually involved in Power Play or the BGS
3) Elite has a crap, crime and punishment system. A working, valid crime and punishment system with harsh penalties to discourage behaviors Fdev or the playerbase deem offensive is needed. IE I mean really bad penalties, millions/billions in Fines, loss of ships, sitting in a detention center for a week of in game time, etc
4) The security system in Elite is pathetic. Even in high security systems. Whatever is going to happen will be over within 5 secs - 1 minute, and security will not be there in the same timeframe. This also needs to be fixed
5) No galaxy wide Spec Ops level group of NPC's or pilots federation group of players hunting and destroying anyone who is wanted. If all players (gankers, BGS'ers, PP'ers, etc) had to be looking over their shoulder as a deterrent to not caring about any fines, bounties or notoriety that they have. This needs to be fixed as well

These are actually a lot of points I agree with. The risk/reward mismatch, the unbelievable C&P system, the police being about as effective as a strongly worded letter about organized crime, and the lack of system exceeding law enforcement are all things I would love to see completely overhauled and improved on. Fixing those things would notably improve Elite.

 

[HEKURA]

The ship insurance system should not be the same for criminals and normal people.

 

[Rubbernuke]

The ship insurance system should not be the same for criminals and normal people.

Indeed. I had ideas like this for criminals:

Treat anarchy controlled systems as invisible for player assets (such as ships)

Being a criminal is fun, but also managing your affairs as you go about your work can and should be fun too. Currently anarchy systems are a bit useless, but what if players could store things in these systems and that when they go to jail (or have to pay things off) these 'extradition free'...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[HEKURA]

Losing all the engineering equipment would be enough. Higher bounty would be ok too. 10+ mil.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Losing all the engineering equipment would be enough. Higher bounty would be ok too. 10+ mil.

You rack up enough bounties as it is, any more is pointless really. Taking away engineering is silly because many engineers are shady criminals themselves and not subject to laws.

Engineering and power creep are the problem, as you have overpowered ships v panda car sec forces. You'd need to replace (or introduce) a better response from police that goes from the useless (like we have now) for low sec, low pop tin shacks to sec ops level for high tech, high pop rich worlds. ATR needs to be randomised (as per my other idea post) so criminals can't count on shields and have to use sill to move about unnoticed.

The problem (and opportunity) is to make criminality the flipside to legal life, where being a criminal has its perks and drawbacks. Being a criminal should pay, but living that life should also come with corresponding drawbacks.

For example if you tied notoriety / levels of bounties with gov types you could be slowly locked out of civilized space as your notoriety increased until at not.10 only anarchy would let you land. Or perhaps superpower rep, where you might take shelter in another superpower (and that they don't recognize crime in other s.powers).

Tie all that to ship maintenance and spares where gov type would bar high end boutique builds being bought / repaired (or are much more costly) misbehavior would slowly push you out and make lower end / universal ships more attractive- or that you really have to work hard /plan to keep them going. Meanwhile law abiding players have access to everything.

 

[Rebel Yell]

We are legit criminals in our space, indeed we are the law!

 

[HEKURA]

Taking away engineering is silly because many engineers are shady criminals themselves and not subject to laws.

I meant the engineered equipment on ship. Everything grade+ to return 0.
Insurance for criminals would have to cost much, much more. Even at the risk of losing everything, due to insurance fraud.

 

[Yuri John]

I meant the engineered equipment on ship. Everything grade+ to return 0.

Denied.

 

[aristide torchia]

Increasingly severe penalties will simply encourage people to combat log on the basis of the same risk-aversion principle as those who'd rather block players than risk looking some imaginary progress bar fill-in. It's a vicious cycle.

The more sustainable solution would be:

1. To have everyone playing open adopt and share a mutual, common sense responsibility and acceptance of a risk of being shot at. It's that simple.

2. Tighter rock-paper-scissors gameplay systems that don't try to be everything for everyone at all cost and where everything is kind of optional.
More choice for the user being always a good thing is a credo coined by someone who does not have the first clue about design.

3. Gameplay designed on the ratio of 9 parts player skill and 1 part - at the most - on time committed to grinding artificial numbers i.e. engineers.
A skilled pilot in a basic ship should be able to give a hard time to a lesser pilot in the most kitted out ship there is. Period.

Everything else – increasing artificial punishments, increasingly optional gameplay elements, rewarding grind over development of skills – will lead to more of what you have right now: a kind of a mediocre, unbalanced mish-mash mess of a game terrified of offending someone and resulting in offending everyone.

 

[SergMx]

I meant the engineered equipment on ship. Everything grade+ to return 0.
Insurance for criminals would have to cost much, much more. Even at the risk of losing everything, due to insurance fraud.

It's just that you're not going to become a criminal.
People who are on a fully armed FDL and committing a merchant killing don't want to have even the most minimal risk.
They will always reject such offers.

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

My modus operandi when it comes to flying in Open is fairly simple; I consider whether I'm prepared to risk losing the rebuy cost, data, cargo, and the time required to recover those assets. Most of the time I assess the risk to be minimal (the bubble is a big place and the majority of CMDR encounters are non-hostile), so I take my chances. In other situations, such as when I'm flying a costly and fragile ship that I'm taking to popular engineering sites, I decide that the risk is too great and I fly in Solo.

When it comes to the Titans specifically, that's a location where I'm already prepared to lose my vessel, so the risk of gankers in Open does not change my calculus all that much, barring unusual circumstances like a need to gather a qualifying number of bonds in a very limited timescale. I've never been attacked by another player at a Titan, all of my ship losses at such places have so far been Thargoid-inflicted. It's a harsh environment.

I get that it sucks when someone flying a ship that's engineered to the gills for PvP action attacks you and melts your non-PvP ship in seconds. That's happened to me more than once, and I extend my commiserations to those pilots similarly afflicted. But at the end of the day if it's really important to avoid a trip to the rebuy screen, there are multiple options available for doing that.

 

[Screemonster]

The point is always that the rules don't cater to players who want to experience risk.

Honestly, I blame the original design and discussion forum for this, because:

Noting that the loss incurred by ship destruction may be a significant multiple of the rebuy cost.

There were multiple option on the table when deciding what the penalty for death should be, and perhaps we should be glad that the people calling for "if you die your save gets wiped" forced-ironman mode weren't listened to, 'cause if that happened this game would be dead by now.

One of the best changes Odyssey made as far as I'm concerned was removing the loss of combat bonds on death. I loved the new thargoid war scenarios like the battles around stations and settlements with repair/rearm on-site so you can keep going and going and going in a massive slogfest, but given my tendency to go out there in a vulture (because it's fun, damnit) a single cyclops would pay over six times my rebuy - if bonds were lost on death, then a basilisk or medusa showing up would be my cue to leave because losing the bonds would sting way harder than the actual rebuy of my ship.

As it is, though, a basi shows up? I've only got my rebuy to lose? COWABUNGA IT IS.

Frankly I think more things should be protected on death. If all you had to lose at any given moment was your rebuy and cargo (and frankly even that I'd be open to be covered by insurance in the case of purchased commodities) I honestly think we'd see a lot less risk-averse behaviour.

And it'd mean a more even playing field in terms of what each party has to lose in the event of... uninvited pugilism.

 

[Darth Ender]

risky behaviour with nothing of value being risked is by definition, no longer risky behaviour.

the design choices of the game and the intention of fdev to attempt to cater to too many mutually exclusive player types and a lack of effort in the variety and complexity of the game activities means balance will forever be a compromise nobody is happy with. attempts to 'fix' elite will obviously never go anywhere. what exists now is what will exist, make peace with imagining stuff missing from the game you are playing.

the only thing that has a chance of 'fixing' elite is opening it to being modded and fragmenting the shared universe players play in by opening it all up to the community. it's not like it really matters or is being taken advantage of that all players share the same one now. the effect current players have is basically indistinguishable from synthetic bgs cycle noise and rng.

 

[Screemonster]

Engineering and power creep are the problem, as you have overpowered ships v panda car sec forces. You'd need to replace (or introduce) a better response from police that goes from the useless (like we have now) for low sec, low pop tin shacks to sec ops level for high tech, high pop rich worlds. ATR needs to be randomised (as per my other idea post) so criminals can't count on shields and have to use sill to move about unnoticed.

Defence engineering powercreep is definitely a problem. A lot of people scream at the idea of toning it down because they won't be able to stride around in their invincible

while completely ignoring any damage output that NPCs throw at them, but it's this exact same powercreep that allows PvPers to gank with utter impunity.

Hell, look at how many times people complain about "invincible G5 murderboats" - the first word is important there. All ships are able to have guns, but they might as well be firing feather dusters for all the good it'll do against an engineered ship.

And guess how much engineering most people tend to have when they're taking their meta-alloy to deciat for the first time?

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

Honestly, I blame the original design and discussion forum for this, because:



There were multiple option on the table when deciding what the penalty for death should be, and perhaps we should be glad that the people calling for "if you die your save gets wiped" forced-ironman mode weren't listened to, 'cause if that happened this game would be dead by now.

One of the best changes Odyssey made as far as I'm concerned was removing the loss of combat bonds on death. I loved the new thargoid war scenarios like the battles around stations and settlements with repair/rearm on-site so you can keep going and going and going in a massive slogfest, but given my tendency to go out there in a vulture (because it's fun, damnit) a single cyclops would pay over six times my rebuy - if bonds were lost on death, then a basilisk or medusa showing up would be my cue to leave because losing the bonds would sting way harder than the actual rebuy of my ship.

As it is, though, a basi shows up? I've only got my rebuy to lose? COWABUNGA IT IS.

Frankly I think more things should be protected on death. If all you had to lose at any given moment was your rebuy and cargo (and frankly even that I'd be open to be covered by insurance in the case of purchased commodities) I honestly think we'd see a lot less risk-averse behaviour.

And it'd mean a more even playing field in terms of what each party has to lose in the event of... uninvited pugilism.

While I like the enthusiasm to encourage people to fly in Open, I think most of the risk averse people are rich enough the cost doesn’t matter. It’s a factor of time and that someone else blew them up for fun that makes them stay out of open more than anything.

I suppose cash does cover some of the time thing, but it wouldn’t cover that someone else had fun at their explosion. Just my two cents.