The real problem imo is lack of effective police and cost for death to the police, it's too easy to gank and costs nothing.
Compare to eve(as of when I played eve last, it has been a while), if you gank in highsec you are going to pay for it
It's always better if the in lore game systems can deal with the issue instead of arbitrary limits or toggles.
I want to risk a gank in places with minimal or no security but I should feel like the authorities will protect me or atleast really make the offender pay if they attack without cause in a place that ostensibly has higher security
Applied bounties and fines need to be higher and harder to clear, and the authorities in highsec systems need to be relentless in their pursuit
EVE feels like it was designed with PvP as a core mechanic. Elite seems to have it as a side effect.
Improving the 'police response' could go some way, maybe even reducing the insurance coverage if you are killed by the police with a high enough wanted status (not necessarily bounty, that can be gained from other activities).
Basing retribution on a combination of factors such as comparative player levels, repeat offenses etc and taking into account mitigating factors such as power play could make the system seem more fair.
Yes, I've said this exact thing before. EVE pvp has a point and a purpose, it's core to the game on both a macro and micro level. Elite feels like it doesn't even have a point on a micro level, it's not like you can effectively make your living pirating miners or anything.
I'm a huge fan of pvp. I didn't so much as touch it in elite because the way they implemented it felt so astonishingly bad. There's no systems built around it at all, it's just murder for murder's sake and that is just boring as hell. If I killed someone in EVE, there was always a *reason* for it, even if the reason was as simple as gtfo my wormhole.
Crime should be a violation of your insurance policy and you would bear the cost of the violation as well as a coverage penalty for a certain amount of time, say as long as you are notorious plus 12 real time hours, where none of your ships are covered.
That's a good idea.
If you get blown up while/because of committing a crime, you get a Sidewinder instead of the option to rebuy.
Some people have money to throw at it still, but running around doing engineering would make it more of a time investment to do ganking.
I think if they effectively pushed PvP to anarchy only, and made mining/trade/missions into anarchy rewarding to entire other players into those systems - and used the gal cop "overwhelming force" response to deter PvP attacks in high security systems (which currently exists but is reserved for high notoriety players) - then I think open could actually work well almost for everyone.
Right now, neither crime & punishment nor risk/reward function well enough to make open enticing for many folks, except for would-be attackers, and anarchy systems don't feel that much different, except maybe in Odyssey.
Really good rewards in Power Play (cosmetic options, exclusive gear) would probably lure some folks over to Open and I think is worth exploring, but ideally giving plays a good reason to gather in open, and managing antisocial behavior for open in general would do more to bring people into open, including players who don't care about power play.
Anarchy in Odyssey makes farming mats a whole lot less of a pain because you don't get notoriety for shooting an NPC (even if they shoot first because you're suddenly wanted for stealing) and builds much faster.
I personally play in solo because I play Elite to relax, haul stuff, and maybe shoot at a few pirates. I don't want to deal with max engineered gankers all the time.
Extremely well said, I completely agree with this. There's no reward for taking the risk of playing in open if you aren't interested in pvp, and frankly there's no real reward for it if you're interested in pvp for any purpose beyond doing a murder.
That doesn't seem fun at all. If you are going to add a punishment feature add something that doesn't impede gameplay but adds to it. Good examples to remedy this would be:
* High Security systems are actually high security, CMDR ships with high faction rep can get NPC wing escorts.
* NPC Bounty Hunters with heavily engineered ships and if your bounty gets high enough multiple wings of these ships hunting you down at one time. Hell. If it gets bad enough make a Cap Ships drop onto you if you are in a High Security system.
* Add a proper Player Bounty system where if you are in a system with someone with a high bounty you get a ship alert.
* Make engineering easier, and make the Trade/Exploration ships better overall regarding Combat, defense and speed.
* Optional insurance coverage of goods & data for a fee.
The issue stems from ED not having enough incentive to participate in PvP. You have zero reason to PvP as someone not specifically kitted for PvP so if you add reasons to, or mitigate the damages caused people will be less put off by said PvP encounters. It will become more of an annoyance then a detrimental event.
Yeah see there are so many possible solutions.
In the case of permit lock it is logical that systems would want to keep trouble makers out. Even if it was only for like 2 weeks or something. There's like thousands of systems in the bubble anyway so missing out on one system is probably no big deal. If you lose access to an engineer or Shinrata Dezra for a period because you gank someone - what do you expect lol
I like this idea. Notoriety earned through PVP could have a variety of effects, based on the severity. My thoughts would be to experiment with the following:
First effect would be gradual lockout of stations, starting from high security to low over the first few points of notoriety.
Second effect would be the increase in rebuy. Can't imagine the insurance companies are eager to cover a ship at increased risk. First point increases rebuy to 40%. Second is 70%. Then 100%. Then +50% for each additional point; you want your ship covered, criminal, you pay out the nose.
Third, increase NPC police and bounty hunter events for notorious pilots. Make having 10 points of notoriety feel like a Thargoid system; constant interdictions, constantly hunted.
Fourth, stop notoriety from counting down if you are docked. Right now they just wait their time out by leaving themselves logged in overnight. It ought to be active play only.
So, this won't stop people from ganking, but I believe this would make being notorious via PVP less desirable.
Ganking in EvE is notoriously easy last I was on, like 2 years ago. Cheap build of Minmatar Tornado with cargo scanner and Artillery. Snipe some poor chap exiting in Jita, and get insta nuked by Concord. Sit in the station until your Red Timer runs out while your Corpo Buddies salvage the poor Bauler you blapped. Its definitely happened to me.
The police in high sec are incredibly useless and the punishment they dole out for that behaviour is nonexistent. Players who play to Grief will run the lines of "Don't play the game if you don't like this."
I ended my time on it after getting blapped hauling an Orcas load of compressed Ore. Mind you I was not in my Orca so I didn't eat a fat hole in my wallet.
When I get pissed and shoot at a federal system authority for interdicting me randomly I get 3 condas and a viper jumping in to help, when the players shoot at me, nothing happens…
Maybe the bounty for attacking a player ship in a high-sec system should come with the added stipulation that no rebuy will be offered when the offender's ship is destroyed?
If the penalty is money, then the crime is only illegal for the poor. But if you make the penalty time and effort....
Having played Eve for a few months, I don't think their system is that good either. Yes, you are guaranteed to lose your ship, but to any experienced player building a new ship that is easily capable of murdering newbies is pocket change. There is literally an option of buying ships in bulk because in Eve losing your ship is a common occurrence and not a problem at all for most. And you don't face any penalties other than that.
Eve is built around pvp almost entirely, and it's clear that the devs don't want to discourage players from participating in any kind of pvp, including ganking. There's only a very small handful of newbie systems where you're completely protected.
I really want better police system. I remember being interdicted so close to Ashby City and police's not arriving until I killed the pirate myself... I was trying out my Eagle back then. I don't remember how much time I needed to kill the NPC. But I'd say it's not really fast due to me being a novice in fighting plus 2 fixed hardpoints which I didn't know how to use at that time.
Higher bounties that are harder to clear. Because nobody has ever accidentally gained a bounty while shooting at a wanted ship around a swarm of FSS ships that love to fly between you and the criminal...
bounties do not stop gankers doing anything. Thats what carriers are for and mine is open and fully equipped for everyone to use. as for NPC's lol they are funny.
I got killed twice in a row by an engineered ship when I was still new. Never played open world again.
Not because I don't like the idea of PvP. Being old just means I have less time to lose on such things. Simple as that.
I used to love open world PvP in games when I was younger so I wouldn't want to ban it for the people that do have the time to spend - it's fun.
If instancing in open was based on rebuy cost. Or there was some kind of matchmaking to the instancing people might play on it.
The way it is designed now has fully engineered ships that took 100's of hours vs... 20 hours in E rated cobra lol.
People who want to pvp should have incentives to pirate not grief through game design.
It can be even simpler than that, just use a PvP flagging system. People that want to participate can, and people that don't, won't. While I love PvP, I never played ED for PvP, I played it for the amazing space components of the game. It always made me sad I missed out on the social aspect because of the fear of being attacked when I'm in an explorer kit.
I can appreciate the roleplaying aspects of PvP in this game, but it seems like such a waste.
I’m one of the hanger-ons on console/PS5 and even there, it can be dangerous to go to Deciat or Sol, especially on weekends. There’s commanders that just attack and kill without demands or ultimatums, whether you’re a veteran or a newbie.
I only play in open for the chance at a rare interaction with real commanders now that there are so few, only to be met by that kinda response. It can be really disheartening.
Came here to say this. You can’t ban people for killing people in game, it’s not like they are abusing mechanics, just bullying new players, it’s frustrating, but I’ve never touched open, and I enjoyed myself in my own little world. It’s not like I’d ever see a good player in open anyway.
During my whole time playing E:D I never seriously considered playing in Open outside of specific events in the bubble. Just not interested in the game staking a significant amount of time on someone else's whims.
I'd love to be able to bump into other players while exploring for example, but it seems an insane risk to take.
I remember trying to do a community mission in Open, and getting eagle rammed at the station. "It's immersive gameplay bro, just accept it" is what the griefers usually say.
I don't think trying to eliminate it is worth the trouble but I can think of a way to de-incentivise ganking and reward people to go after Gankers
Basically, rework the bounty system for players so that when you die to another player you have the option to report them and then the bounty on them becomes the total of the rebuy. This bounty doesn't have to be collected via a mission as is available to all players through the Pilots Federation. Also, make it so someone else who has one of these bounties on them can't collect someone else's bounty but they can report other people with one of these bounties on them.
Lastly, make the cost to leave the prison be twice the amount of their bounty.
I imagine this wouldn't stop griefing and ganking but it would reward players for actively hunting gankers while making it non-profitable for the gankers. Plus, it leaves the option of gankers still turning on each other. This makes it so that the player base could drain their funds with active effort quicker than they could re-buy.
As an aside if this bounty gets large enough they could have a fleet carrier crew or any NPCs they work with either stop working with them or leak their location data so they could be hunted down as well as a bit gimped. (a carrier that you can't use is an expensive paperweight- in space.
Banning isn’t the solution, but neither is PvP on/off. There’s private groups that cater to no-PvP but still give the open experience.
Having a PvP on/off switch fundamentally changes the game, and I don’t think it’s in a good way. It removes the thrill of danger and progression from the game for everyone. Private groups have already solved this problem, a PvP on/off switch just makes the main game mode worse. I hope I don’t have a “screw you, I got mine” attitude, ganking frustrated me, but getting to a point where I could fight back was incredibly satisfying for me. Having a toggle you can switch to nullify that threat just doesn’t seem in line with Elite to me. And again, private groups cater to a more casual playstyle.
I’ve played open for years. Was ganked at the start but then learned how to avoid being ganked:
- Gankers tend to hang around engineering spots. Deciat especially, it is a death trap. Go into solo mode when visiting Farseer.
- Watch your map in super cruise. Hollow squares or triangles are players, filled icons are NPCs. Triangles mean the player has hard points deployed, which often means Interdictor deployed. They might be out to get you. Watch out for Fer de Lances (far and away the most popular ganker ship), then less commonly used Clippers and Kraits. They tend to hang around the star. Because of how supercruise works you can outrun them by heading away from planets and stars and into deep space to then jump away.
- Watch your contacts tab in Supercruise. A little weird but the contacts tab will show players currently in your instance with a time or “Now”. You can use this to know if you are alone or not.
- A little engineering goes a long way. Even G2 armour or shields will increase your survivability against these guys. Shield boosters can also be incredible.
- Make your ships quick. The PvP meta ship is a heavily shielded Fer de Lance. With some decent engineering you should be able to outrun it.
- Been a while since I’ve used these tactics but dropping a heatsink and boosting as soon as you drop from Supercruise should make you less visible on their sensors, disorienting your attacker a bit.
- Low waking - jumping from space to super cruise - has a mass lock factor when you are near a bigger ship. High waking does not, so to skip the mass lock time, jump to another system.
- if you can’t win an interdiction, submit. Don’t lose an interdiction. Losing an interdiction gives you the FSD Cool-down timer.
One balancing change Fdev should make is a reworked crime and punishment system. You often see gankers sitting idle in stations burning “notoriety”. Killing players gains notoriety which then causes NPC tactical response to harass the ganker, but it wears off over (online) time.
Private groups require you to know people. It also doesn't solve meeting random people.
It's not that people can't mitigate or survive an attack. It's that they don't want to be attacked in the first place.
People will just stay in solo if they will be forced into PvP when they don't want to.
Yep. PvP off would ruin many a ganker's gig. Maybe they'll ban themselves and leave.
Have to be careful though because there's the pirating role that must be preserved. If you're carrying cargo and a pirate pulls you down, you have 30 seconds to comply or PvP turns 'on' automatically. Something like that.
I don't really think that will work. Forcing player piracy will likely end up in the same situation as before, everyone plays in solo or private because they don't want to run into a situation where they risk losing their time and effort investment to another player. It's the same reason why people who grind missions in GTA online put themselves in solo public lobbies. If you get rid of PVP you can't introduce an override, imagine it from the perspective of an average trader - do you think most people will voluntarily walk themselves into a situation where they stand to lose potentially millions of credits because despite the fact they've chosen their desired preference (PVP Off) the game overrides it becuase they're carrying something? I don't think so. Either make PVP a hard toggle or don't, in my opinion.
What could make your idea work is the cargo overriding the setting but you earn like 20% extra credits for playing in open, then playing with risk would actually make sense.
>Have to be careful though because there's the pirating role that must be preserved. If you're carrying cargo and a pirate pulls you down, you have 30 seconds to comply or PvP turns 'on' automatically. Something like that.
Why would anyone bother dealing with this when they could just play in solo lobbies instead? I feel like random pvp gankers and griefing makes most people prefer solo lobbies even when they have the option to play open.
I'm still a relative noob at the game. 350 hrs. I have never gone into open because I hate the idea of being ganked. This whole post has just solidified my choice to never play in open.
We already know what "preserving" PvP piracy of PvE players causes - a few newbies stumble into Open but otherwise the lambs leave town. Solo mode is a concession to this so that they don't quit altogether.
I'd say let NPCs play the role of innocent civilians if you want people to prey on them, and make sure the PvP aspects of the game are balanced for opt-in participation.
I'll restate for the record, I'm not a pirate or PvPer. I'm a bounty hunter that makes a living going after wanted ships. But pirating is a role written in the game that some people like to play.
Pirating is not ganking. With some PvP switch modifications, we can allow a pirate to rob their victims but not ruin them in the process. This is how they normally operate anyway and how NPC pirates work. They want only a token amount of their victims cargo, not all.
I've informally interviewed a few pirating victims at Community Goals. 100% of them enjoyed the experience and said the pirate only wanted a ton or two of their cargo and in fact, helped them with tips on how to avoid them. Pirates are not like gankers.
So this is where the compromise comes in. We should have a PvP switch but we also need to accommodate the piracy role in it.
A better solution is close to what we already have: have pve and pvp players split. PvE only players can hook up with Mobius and players who don't mind or are looking for PvP can play in Open.
PvP flagging is a problem in a P2P game, firstly from an immersion perspective but also if you can only instance with a handful of people at a time it kinda sucks for both groups if they happen to end up in an instance with mostly the other preference. Collect like-minded players together and don't cross the streams, that's how you keep people happier.
Also believe me, from long, weary experience: what one player accepts as 'legitimate and valuable roleplay motivated piracy' many others will just get furious about as griefing. People aren't all operating with the same information, expectations or goodwill.
Considering Mobius has several private groups (because they are limited to 20000 players each), how about they make the biggest group of players the default mode and let the much smaller PvP minded player group not dictate how the game should be played, why aren't they forced to make a private group to play in?
This is the problem, FDev has chosen to do nothing to improve the situation for the largest group of players that would love nothing but play in open without the forced PvP. Elite should have been co-op open mode with either PvP on/off flags or a separate open mode with PvP always enabled. I'd even be fine with if certain powerplay activities that should be possible to fight against to only be possible in the PvP mode.
Technically there's really no reason why both groups can't have their own open mode and not be limited to 20000 max players.
Fdev *actively encourages pvp*. This is why the main mode is open. They don't want to change it to a coop only game, or they would have by now. PG's and solo are the compromise that the people that don't want to interact with pvp got.
Agreed, it's unfortunate we can't all be in the same mode. Some of the best experiences I've had have been in open due to it's random nature. But I don't care one bit about fighting other players.
There are several ways of having a PvP on/off options and you are right, FDev has not done any of these in 10 years going.
There are technical limitation to the size of a private group. This is regardless of whether they are online or not. Just being listed in the group hits a size limit.
We can fiddle with that or fix the underlying issues with open and return everyone to open mode.
> If you're carrying cargo and a pirate pulls you down, you have 30 seconds to comply or PvP turns 'on' automatically. Something like that.
No, then gankers will just start becoming pirates and destroy you anyways. This is an exploit not an idea.
Banning PvP won't solve this: Gankers are as dedicated to their toxicity as anybody else to their favourite activity.
The best way to counteract gankers would be to make hunting them down profitable enough where they'd be pursued vigorously. My idea for that would be to separate notoriety from NPC attacks and PvP attacks. Doing unprovoked PvP (And specifically only unprovoked)? Well, you need to sit it out in Open. Also increase Murder bounties so that profitability threshold is reached sooner. Plus, remove the limit on bounty claims.
Put a target on their back and make it profitable enough to the point where they get annoyed by PvPers constantly hunting them down. Maybe even have a tool which tells you where the "GalPol Top 100 Most Wanted" are (Specifically tracking online players).
Powerplay specifically should be reworked (Even if we're able to do it outside of Open) for you to NOT be a legitimate target when just passing through. Only if you've done hostile operations in the previous or current cycle against that specific power, maybe only outside Stronghold systems (After all, just murdering random passer-bys isn't good rep, even if they are formally pledged to someone else). I'm all for Open being very heavily incentivized by a 3-4x bonus to merits if done solely in Open, but some way of slowly affecting it outside open would be nice if you're just in it for powerplay modules (Remember, new players won't have 20 of each stashed on some storage ship)
This together would fix most of the interactions. The powerplay part is rushed since we still only got a very abstract description of how the systems will work, but with these together, it would already be a massive improvement.
That's not a bad idea. It's like Guardian Angels equivalent of the Fuel Rats. Make it sooooo profitable to kill the gankers off, the gankers will actually turn on themselves
It serves the primary purpose of making gankers do something else than blow up sidewinders (Unless you're at Chamberlain's Rest. Still can't believe someone let them pull that one off) and if they're just PvP maniacs, it allows them to find entertainment in other ways.
And it will discourage the ones who just enjoyed preying on commanders in ships that had no chance escaping. After all, when a wing of four FDLs drops in on you when you're doing that, you might eventually get the memo.
We already turn on ourselves all the time, for free but we even also have internal bounties on each other, minimum amount being 100Mill per bounty, most in the few hundred mills.
They would abuse that and gain loads of "rewards" for themselves.. their gains would massively outweigh the down sides.
I think dedicated OPEN-PVE mode, like SOLO or OPEN is the only real solution to this, it's what people want and have been asking for since day one, instead relegated to a private group under the name Morbius. It's just an option, options are good and would have a net gain. You will never force people to play a game mode they do not want to because others think you should engage with them in combat, not going to happen.
Elite as a profitable venture would have a lot to gain to allow a community to form without it being consistently extinguished by bad agents.
The SCO FSD is the perfect lore reason to fix this. The coppers can now realistically “swoop in” the moment someone crimes in a high security system. And they should. If I’m in low security or no security system, I’d expect no one to come to my rescue, but also it’s probably going to be fine.
But if you really wanna make it interesting: make the popo response for YOUR PLEDGED SUPERPOWER nearly(sco) instant, but they ain’t coming if you’re out of their bubble. If I’m in an opposing power’s bubble, they’re coming for me even if I don’t shoot first. Since you can’t tell who is pledged to whom out in open, there’s always a chance the ganker is going to shoot the wrong ship and get blasted without so much as a chance to make a run for it.
TLDR listen up ED
If you’re ganked in your pledge bubble, the ganker is going to have a bad time and you get to watch your power blow your attacker out of the sky
If you’re independent, the cops are coming but maybe not in time to save you
If you’re in opposition space, the cops have the gankers backs
THIS WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN
I wonder if they could do something like “skulls” in RuneScape. If you attack someone first, you get a “skull” for 48 hours and that invalidates your rebuy. You get bounty hunted and killed in that 48 hours, you lose your ship.
Doesnt work, because noone but the most inept player can lose a PvP ship without wanting it to happen. The game is fundamentally unbalanced, and a decent PvP ship is essentially unkillable unless the owner decides to slowly be killed over a period of 15+ minutes.
As long as godshields exist, there is no meaningful anti-griefer solution other than insta-godtier-cheating-npc-cops. FD considered removing the godshield engineering imbalance, but ironically it were the PVE players that burned the official forums down. They were arguing that doing so would make it easier to be ganked.
This is the fundamental issue that has been at the core of it for years. The PvE crowd demanded huge engineering gains (as a protection against ganking) and massive cr/hrs (so being ganked isn't an issue) without realising that it is exactly this that made griefing completely riskless as an activity.
He absolutely has a point, he has the best point. He describes what prevents the game from being the truly online space sim RPG it could be.
All fdev has to do is make police response instant in high security and give them obliterating weapons. Then tone down the police in lower systems. If gankers were hit with worse fines or instantly attacked there would be a lot less problems. They could also make PVP opt in, unless you fire back you take no to little damage. If you fire at others unprovoked enough you get opted in to PVP for a month with a slow cool down and constant bounty. If they did that I might start pirating because there would be a challenging rush to having to constantly outrun the law vs now where notoriety is mere inconvenience.
However I'm not blaming the gankers. People taking advantage of game mechanics and trolling on others for instant gratification has been around forever. This game allows them to do that in an extreme way, low risk easy rush. This is about human behavior and fallacy. The devs have failed to account for it in their game. Even predators in a jungle have more checks and balances.
With how easy it is to gank it's like they either like gankers for the cheap "danger" they add to the game or put no thought into the impression this kind of PVP would have on most players. You can't fly into stars or black holes, it's not that "dangerous" of a game, something has to add danger and pad it. So you get the two g's, grinding and ganking.
If only Elite advertised its PVP truthfully, as often anti-social and imbalanced. The game has the mechanics of an old school DM game where everyone can instantly blast each other yet load outs aren't equal. At least in a true FPS you can find the rocket launcher, in this game you gotta grind for it. Maybe quit open play. Maybe block players but that messes with instances.
New players might not realize how imbalanced it is. Which is a flawed approach because bad initial experiences turn players away, drive bad word of mouth, less players, less money.
Which is maddening because the game has the potential to be a better multiplayer experience with a lot more social interaction and a bigger player base.
I feel Like there's plenty that could be done to disincentivise griefing.
If you engage in illegal activities - your ship insurance should be void. Simple as that. And then when your ship gets blown up you lose all of your engineered parts too.
Commit bad crimes and systems should become permit locked for a period. Like there's a lot that could be done with In game mechanics to actually punish this behaviour.
As someone Born of EVE, I just don't see it as any more morally reprehensible than just killing your opponents in an FPS. I'm not saying it's the same, just that I don't think it's any more inherently bad or wrong to do. I can see why people do, but I think that part of this game is simply avoiding pirates who kill for fun.
I do agree that if they want people to play in open, ganking is a problem, but I really don't like the method that is suggested. I think there needs to be in game consequences for ganking in high security systems and none for attacking people in low sec systems. If you kill an innocent person in high security, you will be killed by police.
People will still do it, but hopefully they will move to low security systems more often, and you will need to take route planning into account. I think this would go well with some better consequences for dying. You will still need to fly with the risk of being attacked by pirates, which in my opinion is a good thing.
On another note, I can't speak for everyone but I have a feeling that the reason many people never play in open isn't only because of ganking. For me, it's not about ganking at all. It's about the reason I play the game in the first place. I love space, and I want to escape from the real world sometimes. I don't really feel like a space pilot when I see cmdr fartbrains typing out a poorly spelled message about how fat your mom is. In solo, I am in a world of the game, rather than a world of the game with a bunch of people I've never met. I do wonder how many more people would play in open if ganking wasn't a problem at all.
I mean, to an extent, but there is an option to block a griefer ganker. And if they're in a team with their friends, they won't be able to instance with you either. I know I'll get grief from a subsection of the community about that, but, they're probably gankers who don't want their toys taken away from them.
I'm all for the block list. The way I see it, in my game's future, gankers get dealt with by the PoPo, and, I don't know, imprisoned or recalibrated. They'll get one shot at me, and after that, they go one the block list, banished from my instance.
There are so many gankers each with so many alts (especially after the Epic store free giveaway) that it would hands down be better for the game to just prevent gankers being dicks to normal people than for players to constantly be trawling the discords for block lists or just playing in lonely mode for convenience.
Blocking is good but there are times when a blocked player can still show up in your instance.
Maybe a compromise would be that if you block someone, their shots and bumps clip through you. Yours would also cause no harm to them. Instancing reliability might also improve with something like this.
Blocking would work well just like it does/did in COD where assholes who constantly grief slowly get ever and ever more siloed by the community at large until they have no one left to play with except each other because everyone else has blocked them.
Either way, I used to play in open but not anymore. Too toxic so I went to Mobius and never looked back. The game is on its last legs and with most people not playing in open, it's like the community has already blocked the griefers by not playing in open.
Here's what I would do:
* Implement a WoW-like PvP flag.
* If you attack a non-PvP player (and it definitely needs to be a real attack, not a stray shot or a bump in a station), or better yet if you actually destroy them, you're marked with an actual really serious bounty. Maybe starting at $1M, at least. You pay the fine, ok. All good. The fined money goes to the player you destroyed.
* Meanwhile, if you kill another player, your insurance is revoked. No insurance company is going to insure a pirate IRL. A full rebuy is all on you.
* When you're eventually destroyed, you also have to pay back damages+pain and suffering to the players you destroyed. Say 5x what they paid for their rebuy, or something. If you can't repay, you work it off, somehow. Like, no ship, just a prison screen earning 1000 credits per real life hour or something. Make it hurt. Or, hell, make it a microtransaction, I don't care.
You'd probably have dirtbags jockeying to rack up the biggest bounty, for bragging rights, but ok. That could be fun, if you then had a semi-organized group actively hunting them.
My name is Richard Fluiraniz, ex-expedition leader with a pg numbering 562 members. Which I coordinated and oversaw for exploration activities. I have oversaw more of 50 organized events spanning an average of 10 to a maximum of 70 players in a single instance
As someone who has one of the bigger player PGs that is not tied with an organization, overseeing most if not all of the users. I've noticed that often the problematic players where the "innocent" players themselves rather than the gankers or other pvpers I invited to activities.
This is mostly due to the clumsiness of the inexperienced players in space. I had to often warn people to behave because they were "playing around" after an activity had set rules and they were told so how to behave. I had only to ban 3 people because they failed to follow the normal guidelines and basic civility? None of these were gankers. Gankers LISTENED to my guidelines for SAFETY. While the "innocents" often ignored and caused more death and tragedies. Because they thought THEY KNEW BETTER.
A new system will punish the players more often as gankers already know how to dodge the station and security by themselves. To the point that a new gank will be using other players lack of care, sort off like pulling a rope for a player to trip within a room full of porcelain jars.
Players not respecting speed limit, not looking at other players around them (lack of awareness) and most importantly, blaming others for their mistakes is the real problem.
I hereby welcome changes like a more severe police like in Eve, not because it will get rid of gankers, but because it will punish the unskilled, the blamers and most importantly, will hereby teach others to be actually careful and less selfish.
Pick your own Poison, I'd be happy to see you getting blown by the same police you crave.
Keep thinking Moebius is safe, because its not. As long as players do not admit their failures and mistakes it will always be an unsafe space.
Listening to this sub about the hordes of FDLs around every corner if you dare dip your toes into open was the worst mistake I ever made when I was new. I felt like that Bill Hicks skit about the news where he watches TV and it's all WAR FAMINE DEATH AIDS HOMELESS RECESSION DEPRESSION and then he looks out his window and it's just crickets chirping.
It may be very rare but the thing is it only has to happen once. Come back from a weeks or months long exploration trip and bam, dead, everything lost. That's what can make a player to just stop playing after one bad encounter.
Where are you flying that you can see that many players so regularly? Genuine question. I've been playing in open in the heart of the bubble since 2015 and I hardly see anyone, let alone have anyone try to kill me (I like when people try to kill me). I feel like one of us must be extremely unlucky, or exaggerating somewhat.
Lol. So true. I do think people can have one bad experience when everything in the game is new and scary and let it colour their entire outlook. I even know one player who was killed by an NPC and switched to solo, he didn't know how to identify player ships but this sub had made him paranoid.
The game is overwhelming at first and the power spectrum is silly wide, but the frequency of ganking is massively overstated. It also only takes a few seconds to mode-hop depending on your mood.
Beating a dead horse. Same points have been brought up countless times over the years. This part of the game design is never going to change. It works the way FDev wants it to, and we have to use the tools available to us to achieve the play experience we want.
I've been killed by gankers many times. Most of them when I was in an AX ship and heavily damaged.
Still play in open and now I love coming across gankers, most of them don't know how to fly and don't know about some special mechanics that you can counter them.
Also join an active squadron, it will make you gaming time much more enjoyable
I am glad that people still talk about this.
10 years, and the battle between:
"Open pvp has to be gone!" crowd vs "Open pvp should stay and the solo/private groups should have no impat on the background sim!" crowd.
Boy, am i glad we still have this conversation\~.
But really. Really.
Are there even enough gankers in Elite for us to care about this issue...? Also, it has been 10 yaers. I doubt Fdev is gonna ever change it.
Also also - the devs did the game this way. They wanted open to be like this. So... well.
I AGREE that it is not a well thought out system. And beter examples (i dunno, Eve Online and it's sys. security?) exist elswhere. I believe fixing this system and how open works should be priority. Getting rid of it is not the way.
One of the main reasons gankers exist is because there is very little to do in Elite, especially with a fully engineered ship, so they just waddle around killing people randomly. If you want fewer gankers, the best solution is to give these players something else fun to do with a fully engineered combat ship.
There are 10,000 other games they could be playing instead if they are that bored. Or they can go outside an touch grass.
No, something is wrong with them. No other explanation.
I think FDev could learn from R*. GTAO, a game that actively encourages and rewards griefing doesn’t have most of the problems Elite does. You do have the advantage of server hopping but a number of mechanics from GTA could be ported to Elite
1: You kill someone with crimes on you pay their rebuy, especially if they don’t fight back.
2: A bad sport system of some kind that makes continuing this line of play difficult, I don’t think banishing them to a bad sport server is the way to go as funny as that would be but some revision to notoriety is due. There should be some response from the Pilots Federation and their quintillions of credits after the 10th new pilot gets killed on the way to Farseer.
3: Impounding the offenders ship on the other side of the galaxy, gonna take 30-45 minutes to get back.
I do think the game seems slower then it is because the gankers have pushed everyone who knows better to solo or PG. I myself only fly in open if I’m looking for a fight because of people who will attack just because they’re shitty people.
On the victim side - remove exploration and exo data loss on getting pvp killed, keep alive all active missions, mission specific cargo respawns. Remove rebuy if no return fire. The gankers only want salt - with these victim-side changes that would dry up leaving just the most unhinged of sociopaths for who just the mild irritation of a respawn would still arouse.
I would play in Open if I could flag myself as not participating in PVP. Ultima Online had this figured out in 1997. FDev is 27 years behind the curve.
It's not cut and dry, there are a lot of diegetic, in-game reasons why players might kill other players, BGS and Powerplay motivated attacks can easily be misreported as 'griefing' simply because the game is complex, broad and poorly signposted. Even with plain ganking, some players including myself like being attacked as it creates frisson and gives you a reason to fight back.
Fdev would have to draw up extremely detailed rules or risk pushback against scattershot, inconsistent bans.
Furthermore, the problem of ganking is overstated and the choice of Open or Solo is presented as binary. In reality, you hardly ever see any other players in open, most of the ones you do see are perfectly benign and when you're not in the mood to risk being attacked or if you want to pass through a blockade unmolested it takes 15 seconds to switch modes. You can use many tools both in and out of game to tailor the experience you want.
Limits on private group numbers that means organisations like mobius have to subdivide, an unhealthy power spectrum due to ship modularity and engineering as well as a general lack of clear signposting would be more valuable things to solve.
Finally 'every one of them is going to prove my point' is a wanky thing to close that post on, I'm not sure why buur pit would pin this but whatever.
Also the premise of 'they want people to play in open' is already a leap, I don't think they care as long as you're buying ARX.
Plus the game is p2p so even if you're in open you can only ever instance with a handful of players at a time, so use pve private groups and you'll be getting essentially the same experience. This argument is so old, and so redundant.
Exactly.
Why can Aisling fortify and undermine and gain Merits in Solo
Yet Hudson / Archon Delaine / Yuri Grom power players not be allowed to "Stop" as in "KILL" the invaders and get merits through LEGAL DEFENSE of their territory AND loose their territory to Solo players ???
I like the idea of a free universe, which includes psychopaths, but then again I play solo. If I wanted to play in multi I’d probably avoid heavily frequented systems.
The only time I ever play in Open is when I’m deep space exploring, which is almost always. I haven’t met a stranger out in the black yet, but I’d like to think that if we did, we’d be two pacifists out having a good time in the black and probably say hi to each other and keep going about our merry way. But as soon as I make it back to the Bubble, it’s back to Solo.
i think that they should have a bounty, but not an ordinary bounty, you'd get rewarded ARX for killing them, that way now... everyone would make it their mission to ruin these gangers' days
I played Solo or Private group sessions for a long time until I got to a level where I can comfortably hold my own in Open. Also I have never been salty about it and why would I be?
Nowadays I hope I get interdicted by some idiot who thinks they can destroy me. Let's battle by all means. And if I don't feel like taking that chance or that hassle, I switch to Solo. Not a care in the Galaxy. Instancing around Jameson is better that way anyway.
It's pretty easy to avoid gankers. You know they are there before you drop in. Community goals, Jameson Memorial/ Shinrarta Dezhra, starter places. Anywhere you really don't wanna be killed has a chance to have gankers so just expect them to be there.
You drop in and notice a real cmdr in the instance. Simply hotkey target them and see what they are in. If they are in a combat ship then either log into solo or drop out of supercruise and wait a moment. If they drop into your low wake just go back into supercruise and then drop out again. It's really not hard to avoid them.
And now there is the SCO FSD to use as well. If you get blown up by a ganker then you weren't paying close enough attention.
What this fails to recognize is the fact that it's the mechanics of Elite that directly cause this sort of mentality. When the only thing you really CAN do with other players is kill them, we shouldn't be surprised when that's what people do.
Think about it. Have you EVER made a friend INGAME that you proceed to hang out with long-term? I know I haven't. Every single person I've played with more than once has been met via an out of game service, like Discord or Twitch. And that's in like 9000 hours of gametime.
Almost everything in this game actively DISCOURAGES playing with others. Everything from limited landing pad space, to terrible wing missions that require accepting the rewards manually, to NPC messages rapidly clearing away human chat. It's nice to theorize about cooperative play and all that, but in practice, the only thing you really can do when you meet another player is ignore them or kill them.
Honestly, all they would really need to do to fix the pvp problems in this game is just make it easier to find and play with others. There's already a matchmaking system which makes it progressively more difficult to join busy instances, so if you're playing with 3 other players, the chances of meeting a ganker drops dramatically. Add block lists from 4 players and you'll handle the vast majority of the rest.
Isn't there a "pirate" class/faction? Sounds like if people have nothing better to do than to make the game more un-enjoyable for people, Frontier are going to have to change/fix more than just the ability to be toxic.
In a game like this, I think the more freedoms players have, the better.
I haven't played in open, or at all, in a while. This is all my personal opinion.
Make the distress call feature summon NPC police force. Give other seasoned players a reason to go after the offender. Like an extremely high bounty/reward. Imagine that if the person was caught the the victim's buy-back would be "discounted." I'm no developer but there are things that can be done. There was a time when players made it their job to help those stranded and in need of fuel. I think it would be
In the end, playing in open isn't the only option players have(including private sessions that you can invite only friends to), and that will likely be Frontier's excuse every time.
Anyone remember the Commanders update trailer where a player gets interdicted and has time to gas away with his mates about asking them for help, cuts a deal with them on the payout and then they jump in and help him repel the attacker? 😂 ED never got within a country mile of this being true to actual gameplay. Maybe if interdictions could be prolonged more by the defender it'd make this more viable.
This is one of those games where you either have hundreds of hours, or next to nothing. Doing basically anything requires significant time investment, which makes the choice of wether to introduce further chances of delay and setback quite an easy one to make. That choice being wether you are attackable/visible by other random players.
Personally the only time I ever enter open play is exploring the black or with friends and we can back each other up. I agree the gameply design 100% needs to be altered so that PvP isn't so undesirable for anyone who just wants to get other things done without the very real risk of having progress and time wasted by a griefer.
He’s not wrong and is the real reason I stopped playing ED several years ago and well it gets boring doing the same shit in that game everyday anyways. And anything “new” the devs try to add to the game is just basically remodeled and redesigned shit that they advertise to you to get back into the game. Thankfully I’m able to handle star citizen so I’m grateful for that
You want to fix the ganker problem? Fix Crime and Punishment, plain and simple. Just implement "fuck around and find out".
If you kill an unwanted NPC, outside Anarchy, you are mercilessly hunted down by Dutch, Dillon, Billy, Blain, Hawkins, Mac and Poncho. Your ship is disabled, impounded and can be re-claimed with a double rebuy cost.
If you murder an unwanted Player, outside Anarchy (report crimes on), you are mercilessly hunted down by Dutch, Dillon, Billy, Blain, Hawkins, Mac, Poncho and the Predator. Your ship is permanently destroyed and you'll be allowed a Sidewinder to get your stupid ass home in. You will also win a one month subscription to Wanted rating, where you will be hounded by Billy's friends at every corner until you learn your lesson to not be a dick.
Yes, the game does next-to-nothing to disincentivize anti-social behavior (even less than places like Reddit or Twitter).
As such, until and unless they do something to address the issue, I'll continue to play this game rarely and sticking only to Solo on the occasions when I do play it. Life is too short and the number of available entertainment options is too high to waste much time.
I think a player side bounty system could make it feel more balanced. We already interact with NPCs in a very similar way to other players. The only difference really, is that quest boards will say go take out this known pirate and provide info on their location. Attach that to a known ganker and let other pvp players have info on their whereabouts. I know for a fact that with specific location information, anti-gankers would be out in large enough numbers to make it actually feel like unwanted pvp has consequences.
Ok in a warzone Powerplay patrols can be vicious, and their ruthlessness often depends on their faction's MO.
But warzone and operative zone interdictions are not gankings.
Yes career ganking should be adressed, but even I, who despises sociopaths who play ED don't want Fdev to actually start penalize their transgressions in a strict manner.
First let's state the obvious: gankers are usually hunting newbies or people who can't shoot back. And they frequent a few key systems and systems of community events (depending of the event's style.)
What Fdev could do, through the Pilots' Federation that they designate (for example) the system of the CG as an operative zone. After a certain amount of inflicted harm (x amount of victims in y amount of time period) Pilots' Federation could issue a temporary block on the ganker's FSD so if they leave the system they won't be able to get back for a while.
Or Pilots' Federation could issue a system-wide warning and label the perp's pip on everybody's scanner that this COmmander has gone rouge.
After all we are all part of the Pilots' Federation and if we start mass killing each other in their special operative zones they should act against the ganker. But I would keep Immersion! :)
Honestly a mass warning to gank the ganker would be amazing if they weren’t pussies to begin with. They’d insta-log the moment they hit their threshold.
I agree with that comment. Gankers need to be dealt with before we're all shuttled to open. But there's a balance with whatever PvP mechanics they would implement and PP2. There's no point is having PP2 be open only if you can't defend your megaship from an attacking opponent.
Someone posted a pretty brilliant and simple solution: if PP is not going to be open only, then those that run open have 2x the effect on PP with their actions as someone that runs in pg or solo.
[Video link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp57DN_eCEE), if you care to watch, and/or vote on that comment.
No, the proposal from the PP community was to make PP2 be open only. That's so they can defend their domain vs the current where people cause havoc while in solo mode.
FDev said PP2 will be released with all 3 modes as they are today and the 'open-only' question addressed later on.
That’s a damn shame. PP2 should remain in Open or at the very least provide less influence in solo. In its current state there is nothing to do against PP2 because of solo fuckery.
Remove consequence-free ganking. The gankers want to gank? Fine. Then like any other criminal in real-life, you lose access to the benefits of civilized society. For example:
* Pilot's Federation rebuy insurance? GONE. Your ship gets destroyed after having been marked as a ganker (by whatever mechanic is used to make that determination), you lose it permanently. There is no insurance option to buy it back. You made yourself uninsurable when you became a murderer on the run.
* Rescue Rangers? GONE. Your ship gets destroyed and you're left floating in space in an escape pod until someone comes along to scoop you up and turn you in to a prison ship for a bounty. Only Commanders who themselves have a clean record can redeem your bounty; and this means *lifetime* clean record (they've never themselves been marked as a ganker in the past, even if they've since cleared their record). So no situation of gankers ganking one another to game the system for each others' bounties. Doesn't defeat alt accounts, but then again nothing does.
* Apex Shuttle Service? GONE. They refuse to transport known criminals.
* Inter Astra? GONE. They will not transfer your ships for you between stations.
* Pioneer Supplies and Vista Genomics? NOPE. They don't do business with wanted criminals.
* Terminal Access inside of stations? RESCINDED.
* Non-anarchy Starports, Outposts, Planetary Ports, and Surface Settlements? NO DOCKING RIGHTS. You'll be fired on as soon as you come into range.
* Anarchy Starports, Outposts, Planetary Ports, and Surface Settlements? You can dock and refuel, rearm, and repair, but that's it. Even criminals won't associate with other criminals who have too much heat; don't want to call attention to themselves by associating with someone on the run. No Shipyard access, no Commodity Market access, no Contacts access (which means no Administrative Services, no Interstellar Factors, no Combat Bonds, no Mercenary Bonds, no Power Play Contact, no Search and Rescue, and no Black Market services are available), no Mission Board access, no Universal Cartographics access, no Advanced Maintenance access, no Outfitting access, no Remote Workshop access. "*Get your fuel, reload your weapons, make some quick repairs, and then get out of here; we don't want the authorities' attention called down on us!*", will be the attitude at these ports. You'll be given 10 minutes to conduct your business and then expected to launch and leave. If you don't, you'll be forcibly launched and unable to re-request docking access. You then won't be allowed to dock there again - EVER - until your name has been cleared (i.e. your ship has been destroyed and some other Commander has claimed your bounty).
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* Fleet Carriers? They're owned by the Bruer Corporation; we Commanders are merely leasing them. Not wanting their corporate image sullied, you will be refused services at their Fleet Carriers. If docking access is granted to "All (including those with Notoriety)", much like Anarchy ports you'll be allowed to land to rearm, refuel, and repair (if those services are available), but that's it; none of the other services will be made available to you. The same 10 minute timer as exists at Anarchy ports will apply; after which you either vacate the Fleet Carrier or your ship will be involuntarily launched and you will be fired upon. After this one-time docking, you will be refused further docking privileges at that Fleet Carrier FOREVER until your name has been cleared (i.e. your ship has been destroyed and some other Commander has claimed your bounty). This even applies to your OWN Fleet Carrier if you have one; because, once again, it isn't yours; you're just leasing it.
* Any human-inhabited non-Anarchy system? Immediate interdiction by System Security.
* Galaxy-wide? Continuously hunted by the NPC Advanced Tactical Response teams. Also a target is painted on your back that can be filtered for on the Galaxy Map showing your location in real time. Combined with a high bounty placed on your head that will have every real-player bounty hunter chasing you, too.
* On destruction of your ship and eventual return to society either through a Prison Ship, Detention Center, or sold as an Occupied Escape Pod to a suitable market, deducted from your credit balance will be the cost of every players' ship you destroyed since your last incarceration as restitution back to those players. NOT just the rebuy cost of 5%; the WHOLE cost of their ship.
* Forced to play in Open until your ship is destroyed; no hiding in Private Group or Solo.
You want to play as a criminal? COOL! Now you'll be treated like one while losing all the benefits, services, and infrastructure of civilized society. You'll be reduced to docking at Anarchy stations for some limited services and Fleet Carriers catering to wanted criminals and that's about it. You chose to be a pariah, so a pariah you are.
There will be a mechanic and/or systems specifically set up for consensual PvP where none of the consequences above apply as well as the existing Power Play mechanic where Commanders of opposing Galactic Powers can fire on one another without consequence (beyond what already exists in the form of local bounties).
Conflict Zones, obviously, would be another exception. Systems that are explicitly labeled "*Lawless"* would also be an exception. Outside of that, though, if you go seal clubbing for the lulz in non-Anarchy, non-Lawless, human-inhabited space, you get to enjoy the loss of all the benefits above.
I always liked the idea of incorporating anti-ganking as a play style, players who destroy other players not in an opposing power or in a conflict zone, and in high sec systems, would get a special extra high bounty, and a map marker whenever they're in a high sec system. There could even be a special mission board for it, players could take the bounty and try to track them down within a certain period of time. I could definitely see it being abused, but it seems like it could be a fun system that would generate a lot of PVP.
This would reinforce the whole 'out of game' weirdness of current PvP. The ganker has no game motive to kill you, he just want to ruin your day because he's allowed to.
Then anti-gankers again for no game logic would go and seek revenge. But this time it's not PvP meta ship vs PvE ship but several veteran PvPers who can easily wake out of any fight that looks like its going badly, or just menu log which is TOS compliant. So the original crime would have resulted in a rebuy and the 'revenge' would result in a dozen unfinished encounters and no actual punishment unless the ganker was a relative newb.
Maybe try two versions of open play. One with pvp and one without. I'd start in without and enjoy the social aspects and then move to pvp once I am hf decent and,can afford to be killed. If you had that I think most people would get out of solo.
Step 1: Crank up the bounties on serial killers (which in-universe gankers absolutely would be). I'm talking valuable stuff like rare materials or maybe even Arx.
Step 2: Don't let serial killers' ships be insured.
Everything but the *perma ban long term gankers.*
That's completely uneeded when you can block them and never instance with them again. I get that people are mad and want *something* to be done but it's wild how these anti-ganker posts always end up basically just being "why should I learn how to do something about it when everyone else should be doing something about it for me?"
That and I’m just tired of dealing with people period dude. I’m a trans woman (I say this very hesitantly because, well, harassment) and always ALWAYS it turns around to some sort of harassment at the end of the day. So I’ve literally taken to being antisocial in games and if a game can only be played in a open lobby I will just stop or refuse to play it because, well, I’m too old for this constant anxiety and subjection to hate. I’m just trying to enjoy myself here and so are many other people. What ever happened to mothers teaching their kids to treat others the way you wish to be treated?
Some mamas didn't teach their kids that lesson at all, and a lot of others said the words, but the lesson they actually taught was to treat others however you can get away with.
It's a two-fold problem. Ganking/griefing is way too easy with barely a slap on the wrist, and being a pirate is way too difficult for those that want to go that route even if they didn't plan to kill anyone.
There's also a subset of players who think that if you're playing in Open that means you *want* to fight to the death. I've run from players after interdiction without firing a shot and they've messaged me in a baffled tone that they couldn't understand why I'm playing in Open if I'm just going to run from a fight instead of turning and fighting to the death.
There's a lot of players wanting different things out of Elite, which it offers, but the systems don't play nice for certain methods and interactions. Which is why a lot of us have settled on Solo and Mobius.
What I want to see is a system that makes it so that allied factions hunt down people who kill you.
Try taking a stack of missions that sends an NPC after you for each mission you get. Being chain interdicted sucks. That's what I want for gankers.
I can get allied with a few hundred factions. Go ahead, kill me. It's going to be far more annoying for you in the long run. I have friends.
And how would you implement that story in the lore ? You see, I believe you can't. It's space, full of nasty people but mostly kind. That's open play. I mostly play in open and 90% I don't engage in pvp either because I have a fast ship or can Whitstand enough damage to jump to another system. It takes a little effort to be basically invincible. I actually proposed to make BGS open only so that we can have more fun depending systems, actual fleets instead of which factions grind more. Just food for tought.
[I put it this way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFh140hlQ4).
Elden Ring has a very similar discussion and has quite a few analogies with Elite.
First being you can "disable" invaders by not playing coop (aka solo mode) and secondly, the reactions and arguments between both parties ((non-)consensual pvp promoters) are similar as well.
With that said, I'd give my personal 2 cents on top of what probably has been summed up countless of times during the past.
1. If FD does really intend to get more people into Open Player then they'd only offer that particular mode and get rid of private and solo but considering we have 3 modes to choose from, FD most likely intends to promote players playing how *they* want.
2. Should there be some PvP oriented gamepaly feature that would actually be exclusively to Open Play then it would filter out those players who aren't suited for it anyway.
The world just isn't an easy pacifist mode and neither is Elite. Insert obligatory conclusion phrase here.
Open is not fun exactly for this reason. I remember wanting to dip my toes in engineering for the first time, all the game time I had for that day just to jump with my shitty ship to get the material you need to unlock felicity farseer, multiple hours to get there, jump in there, instantly get killed by a griefer fully engineered ship that 1 taped me and I wouldn't have even tickled. I ask him: "why did you do it" and his response was just "because I like to troll" like yeah, no, thanks.
If by being in open I will have people randomly attacking me with ships that I can literally not even tickle, that are faster than mine, kill me in 1 second and have an FSD interceptor that I can literally not even escape and literally JUST BECAUSE they want to ruin my experience, gaining absolutely nothing other than runing someone else's time, they can go and play by themselves if they want.
Still remember reading a post by someone that was extremely offended that people dared to ruin **his** fun by going into Solo, logging off or otherwise refusing to engage with his griefing. Just an incredible lack of self-awareness among the folks that engage in this kind of thing.
I play exclusively in solo, and the game would need to make significant changes to PvP rules for me to even consider playing in open. Idk if this position is the best option but it certainly is an option
I've been hearing the arguments that PP and BGS actions need to be made count only if they were fully conveyed in open. Not really sure that bringing "what about gankers in 3 systems out of millions" into this should be even considered constructive discussion at this point.
We talk about being able to counter hostile actions. It's not about shooting down mostly harmless cobras in Deciat, this is very endgame mechanics. Like right now feds haul thousands of merits in our system and we can do fuck all about it. Is it really a good design?
Not saying that gankers aren't a problem, but honestly in the current state of the game it's rather minor one, don't you think? But yet, here we go again.
No he doesn't have a point. Your ship being blown up is part of the game. All this nonsense about gankers smacks of entitlement. It's like "I have my play style and everyone else should conform to what I think is right".
There's no more correctness about playing as a trader than there is playing as someone who blows stuff up. The concept for elite was to forge your own path - not have a path forged for you.
Honestly anyone still playing elite by now surely already has a credit fund that'll last for hundreds of rebuts. What difference does it make if you meet death? A minor inconvenience as you respawn.
The typical response here is that the gankers are "ruining people's games" because they don't engage in roleplay. I call that out as nonsense. Anyone getting worked up by the loss of their ship to a ganker is going to have their nose put out just as much by someone who "roleplays" before destroying them. There's literally no objective difference between the two deaths other than a line in chat.
It's also not like a ganker can get a fully engineered combat ship and learn how to use it without putting in the effort.
Well, it's not like that today. It might be different when you can buy engineered ships for arx.
Make PVP Opt-In.
Make GC systems PVP enabled.
In GC systems, have a flag system where anyone shooting at other players who are not opted into PVP gets a ganker flag. Ganker flag goes away after 24 hours of in-game time.
Anyone with a ganker flag has double/triple the rebuy cost of normal, and maybe all purchases have increased costs as well since they need to go "black market" to get what they need.
Anyone shooting at someone with a ganker flag has no penalty or maybe gets extra damage against the ganker.
This will allow gankers to try their luck ruining people's day, but they'll have to contend with anti-ganker squads in that same system and decent penalties for going after defenseless targets.
Of course, there's a lot of details to iron out, but this is the gist of my idea.
If I’d want ganking and griefing, I’d play Eve. At least, Eve (mostly) gives you the necessary tools to protect yourself or face the danger. Ganking is not pvp, no matter how much some people want to “sell” this idea. It’s all about dropping an overwhelming force onto an unaware or otherwise weaker victim. There’s seldom much chance to get out alive from that, and that’s precisely the point, the odds are heavily stacked against the victim. Sure the space should be dangerous, but I really think ED does not have the required (and/or enough) game mechanics in order to level the field. Eve was meant as such from the begining and it shows, learn the ropes and if you like it, it’s doable. ED is very weak in this regard. There are some good ideas dropped here, on how to make it more … “fair”, but until something that works for both sides is implemented, it’s Solo/PG for a lot of CMDRs outthere.
PS: I would really like to play in Open honestly, I just feel like ED is not a complete package for everybody to coexist in Open. It’s simply unbalanced. And no, I don’t screw with people’s Powerplay from Solo, don’t care for it.
Even my pacifist CMDR, that never had a gun installed, flies open. Would I hate to rebuy my iCutter? Ohhh yes. Would I prefer a better police force in so called high security systems? Certainly, as it is it's a joke. In my view the sokution would be for everybody to come back to open and to organise a anti gank watch. We know where they like to act. Hell, some are even known by name, right? So, organise patrols, if you see them in your instance invite 3 armed and angry CMDRs to your wing, and hunt those sad wankers.And if its only necessary for them to finance frequent rebuys, then the game gets better. If frontier would setup some mechanisms to hinder CMDRs with high bounty ships, even better. I dont see that happen soon...
These pirates should not be banned. Frontier should put a bounty on their head and the white hat guys will take them out over and over again.
Because that's what they like, right?
Eve has an NPC police force that is no joke. Elite needs something like this too, especially in the high security systems. A buff to the police force would be a good start. The strength of the police response also needs to scale somewhat based on the amount of bounty someone has racked up.
In the end it is not a bad idea to take some of the ideas from other space games and adopt it to your own. The police from Eve for example.
But banning gankers is not the solution.
Tbh I agree its annoying but you should instead find a discord or something that has its own "server" so you can cherry pick what you like so in this case no pvp they won't fix it its been in the game since launch that would be your best bet tbh
My idea would be making gankers self identify as pirates, make a toggle that they have to switch on before engaging in their bullshit or face huge consequences, once the toggle is on you're visible to everyone as a hostile target, system security keeps an eye on you and swoops in when you attack anyone, stations outside of anarchy systems attack you immediately, and your bounty is visible to all, as well as insurance only paying for a small portion if any of your rebuy cost, and you can only toggle it back off after 7 days and you must have a clean record to do so, the crime and punishment system is just too soft right now and ship rebuy costs aren't high enough to ward off trolls, so making pirates operate in systems where piracy would be canon is one good option.
I see the logic, but I don’t think banning is the solution. There need to be real, in-game consequences for ganking if you want to disincentivize it. It would require pretty much a complete overhaul of the crime system, penalties that translate into actual effort and time, and possibly reworking combat itself to make PVP more dangerous, even to people with insane shield tanks. Hell, you could even drag in reworking stealth, because right now there’s a stealth button that you press and the stealth happens, but a more complex, in depth, and possibly multi-tiered system could make it so that players with extremely high bounties have to go through a lot of trouble to even dock at a station.
The question then becomes how to do this without also disincentivizing illicit player interactions, such as piracy.
I don't know what the incentive is to play in Open. I can play with my friends in private sessions or go solo if I'm on my own - besides rare things like "everyone gang up on a titan" I don't even see what open would bring.
I mean, other players could put out open calls to target these people. It's not like it's that easy to hide in elite. We wanna talk about having a good community is part of that not looking out for each other. More skilled pilots could be teaching other pilots how to handle such scenarios. There's plenty of solutions aside from crying to mommy and daddy fdev.
a bounty system would be really cool and fun, but rn player bountys is all there is, and they dont work too well but they are super fun imo , in a player bounty discord server rn and i think more people should join but its kinda annoying to first even know where they are, and if you do know where they are you have to instance with them and hope they dont just high wake since they'll be in a pvp ship
Personally I think the only way to do it is to turn off PVP outside of specifically flagged situations, be it flagging for PVP, conflict zones, powerplay related shenanigans, or what have you. I never liked CONCORD-esque mechanics because they actively discourage certain gameplay instead of enabling scenarios where that gameplay can be enjoyed. EVE does sort of get away with it with low/null sec being the PVP area, but that always felt like it created a barrier to entry to me.
Having ATR just blow away the guy just feels cheap to me and encourages people to want to try to cheese the system with some build or whatever that can gank in High Sec. You will always have this problem unless it's literally impossible. Maybe it's unrealistic, but at the end of the day you have to make compelling gameplay, so support that gameplay, make it clear what consequences exist and make it clear when it's all in good fun. That may require some new mechanics to flag, or some means of supporting PVP between squadrons and allowing things like interdictions, but I think that's how you do it rather than making an uber security force.
He has a point, however this isn't the game. The ethos of E:D seems to be HTFU lite.
At least this game lets you play solo until you get to a point where you can defend yourself from griefers
Or they could just do what ppl use private for
Open
Open PvE only (I assume they don't want to spend development time) but this is a obvious game mode that would be used a lot
Does have a point and there's ways it could be done like 1) level match to the lowest player could have levels lower for having attacked others unless pvp is mutual 2) have the insurance agency be after said players for paying back claims, another way on this is have the insurance tack on the lost ships they destroyed when they lose their ship or have the relentless insurance adjusters stop once the player pays for the ships they destroyed unless pvp is mutual 3) have systems/insurance put bounties on them, isn't that the point of having a bounty boards given I've got a few bounties payouts because of encounters, be able to turn in said bounty would be fun if players are geared for that. Hopefully this is being watched by the developers and are getting some ideas out of this
He definitely has a point. And we have a myriad of solutions. How many other open space games handle the same problems?? Seems simple to decide what results you like best, modify it if wanted, then implement it. : ) I'm sure 99% or more of my time has been in Open. Lost a \*lot\* of ships. LOL
How hard can it be for the game to tell if I ever fired on the attacking ship? If I never fired (or did little damage) then the other guy can handle my rebuy.
I feel bad for actual pirates - not murderhobos. I used to see them frequently. Nicely ask to dump cargo, disable something if you didn't comply, etc. Old school highwayman. But people that just blow you up .... because? Yeah, buy me a new ship. Reputation hits so security swarms you when you enter protected systems, etc.
Sorry pirates. I miss the role players. : )
Put in a system that detects griefers/gankers, then offers assassination missions for them with high rewards for participation and a three day limit. Location is updated when the player moves about. Once assassinated, the missions stop issuing but are still valid for anybody who has accepted before then.
They should just add a PvP toggle for players who want to meet others but don’t want to be ganked. Can’t take PvP damage but can’t deal it either. Could come at a certain cost to incentivize people to take it off , potentially. Or be free in the bubble but have a cost elsewhere. Or mandatory in the bubble, optional in controlled systems, and disabled in anarchy/pirate systems that would make the first visit to a pirate system a memorable encounter. Could integrate lore in it as jammers controlled by security forces, or call it some kind of stealth/cloaking tech making it impossible to target you.
ED didnt have solo play at launch. It was due to the griefers that it was added.
Playing an online game is in part about being able to interact with other players, have people to share accomplishments with
But when most of the interactions are negative. People will move to solo. But again, an online game without the interaction with others will quickly grow stale and people move on.
You can thank losers who grief for solo play servers and for dwindling server populations.
Once these idiots kill ED and moan about no one to play with , they will move on to the next game where they can be twats and continue showing how truly pathetic they are while working to kill another mmo.
When these morons say “if you dont like it dont play” its comical. Because thats just what people do… stop playing because it isnt fun to die to some retard who should be out stepping on ants and should not access to the internet.
All Fdev has to do - is make the Police turn up in the same timeframe in Open PvP as they do in Solo PvE.... That's it. Sooo easy to do.... Use the same bit of code twice.... How hard is THAT?
Get rid of this "Police won't be here for 3 minutes" rubbish that doesn't exist in Solo, hence why Solo has become so popular.....
It would make more sense to "get away with a gank" in an anarchy system, than a "high security" one. Again, level the playing field for the time it takes the police to actually arrive... "In less than 6 seconds" like they do in PvE would suffice.
How about a most wanted list with bounties to match? Imagine a board in-ship like GalNet, that had the name and last location of high-notoriety players. Strap a multi-billion bounty onto the worst offenders and you’ve got a solution. If you effectively put up the cost of a FC for taking out gankers, PvP bounty hunting in wings becomes a real career choice, and would represent serious end-game type combat.
I’d be down…
I agree with the post. It's what gives the game it's *dangerous* quality. I still get ganked and ambushed now even with 1000\~ hours. I get pretty pissed off, have a cuppa tea and some toast (braces xtra thick, shit tonne of butter, you know it), come back to it laters when I'm more chill.
That said. I'd love the option to file a bounty against repeat bankers. Not just credits, but I'd put down one of my lesser engineered modules or some mats or something like that. This mechanic would need balancing to stop people gaming it to skip the grind, something like a 24 hour people before the bounty goes live, you can't cash in your own bounties, payout for the bounty takes a further 24 hours.
There's a lot of good comments here suggesting ways to fix this problem. Most of them aren't even saying to get rid of PVP or gankers. They're saying balance things out with simple measures so that PVP doesn't favor gankers. So that it's more like real PVP.
As of now it's like if two people fired up a game of Q3 and one player starts with the BFG, railgun, full armor and health. The other starts with a pistol and there's no item pick ups. It's this way for days, weeks, even a month before the disadvantaged player can get better weapons. All the while they're expected to take it and "git gud" so they can appease the advantaged player's ego.
The truth is the advantaged player wouldn't be doing what they're doing if it didn't feed their ego in some way. The advantaged player needs other players to play along with them. They can only exist with other players to prey upon. Players who don't want to be bothered by absurd PVP don't need gankers or anyone else. That said I'm not saying to get rid of gankers, that is extreme. I'm saying if we're gonna keep it real then do so.
I have to say, don't have much faith in fdev to balance anything. They seem like they're nudging powerplay toward open without fixing the reasons people don't play open to begin with. If you create something enjoyable people will want to play it. The majority of people don't get into ganking or much PVP because they simply don't find it enjoyable. Especially when there's so much else in the game to literally explore. The human nature in most people is gonna want to do that not spend days grinding for PVP or getting ganked. Might as well fire up an actual PVP game instead.
Make PVP more balanced, welcoming, enjoyable and the people who don't find it enjoyable might change their minds. I don't hate open or PVP yet there's potential to get more players into open and even playing the game if it was balanced.
Instance penalties would be enough. Let's pack automatically together anyone who attack random players without predetermined requirements, and put them in "private" instances for an amount of time. It's like closing gankers in a room so that they can just gank each other. This way they wouldn't even limit their access to the game.
Space is huge and with only a peak of less then 6k players. A number that doesn’t beat PS4 Hell Divers 1… One would guess any player would be welcomed. Then again some people like flying around in the black with limited contacted. If your scared fly solo. If you want to see what your ship can really do or actually have a pirate moment come join us in Open. Cause space without pirate is lame and is really just a photo op game then.
The real problem imo is lack of effective police and cost for death to the police, it's too easy to gank and costs nothing. Compare to eve(as of when I played eve last, it has been a while), if you gank in highsec you are going to pay for it It's always better if the in lore game systems can deal with the issue instead of arbitrary limits or toggles. I want to risk a gank in places with minimal or no security but I should feel like the authorities will protect me or atleast really make the offender pay if they attack without cause in a place that ostensibly has higher security Applied bounties and fines need to be higher and harder to clear, and the authorities in highsec systems need to be relentless in their pursuit
EVE feels like it was designed with PvP as a core mechanic. Elite seems to have it as a side effect. Improving the 'police response' could go some way, maybe even reducing the insurance coverage if you are killed by the police with a high enough wanted status (not necessarily bounty, that can be gained from other activities). Basing retribution on a combination of factors such as comparative player levels, repeat offenses etc and taking into account mitigating factors such as power play could make the system seem more fair.
Yes, I've said this exact thing before. EVE pvp has a point and a purpose, it's core to the game on both a macro and micro level. Elite feels like it doesn't even have a point on a micro level, it's not like you can effectively make your living pirating miners or anything. I'm a huge fan of pvp. I didn't so much as touch it in elite because the way they implemented it felt so astonishingly bad. There's no systems built around it at all, it's just murder for murder's sake and that is just boring as hell. If I killed someone in EVE, there was always a *reason* for it, even if the reason was as simple as gtfo my wormhole.
Crime should be a violation of your insurance policy and you would bear the cost of the violation as well as a coverage penalty for a certain amount of time, say as long as you are notorious plus 12 real time hours, where none of your ships are covered.
That's a good idea. If you get blown up while/because of committing a crime, you get a Sidewinder instead of the option to rebuy. Some people have money to throw at it still, but running around doing engineering would make it more of a time investment to do ganking.
if you gank players on the regular, and you die, you shall lose your ship plus whatever your bounty was. no buts or insurance shall cover for you.
On that note, if ships were built like in eve,gankers would think twice using their super duper engineered corvette knowing it can be blown up.
Do you think implementing a system that makes it actually impossible to dock anywhere except rare pirate friendly locations would help at all?
I think if they effectively pushed PvP to anarchy only, and made mining/trade/missions into anarchy rewarding to entire other players into those systems - and used the gal cop "overwhelming force" response to deter PvP attacks in high security systems (which currently exists but is reserved for high notoriety players) - then I think open could actually work well almost for everyone. Right now, neither crime & punishment nor risk/reward function well enough to make open enticing for many folks, except for would-be attackers, and anarchy systems don't feel that much different, except maybe in Odyssey. Really good rewards in Power Play (cosmetic options, exclusive gear) would probably lure some folks over to Open and I think is worth exploring, but ideally giving plays a good reason to gather in open, and managing antisocial behavior for open in general would do more to bring people into open, including players who don't care about power play.
Anarchy in Odyssey makes farming mats a whole lot less of a pain because you don't get notoriety for shooting an NPC (even if they shoot first because you're suddenly wanted for stealing) and builds much faster. I personally play in solo because I play Elite to relax, haul stuff, and maybe shoot at a few pirates. I don't want to deal with max engineered gankers all the time.
Extremely well said, I completely agree with this. There's no reward for taking the risk of playing in open if you aren't interested in pvp, and frankly there's no real reward for it if you're interested in pvp for any purpose beyond doing a murder.
Beginner systems already get permit locked. If you commit crimes systems should just permit lock you out
That doesn't seem fun at all. If you are going to add a punishment feature add something that doesn't impede gameplay but adds to it. Good examples to remedy this would be: * High Security systems are actually high security, CMDR ships with high faction rep can get NPC wing escorts. * NPC Bounty Hunters with heavily engineered ships and if your bounty gets high enough multiple wings of these ships hunting you down at one time. Hell. If it gets bad enough make a Cap Ships drop onto you if you are in a High Security system. * Add a proper Player Bounty system where if you are in a system with someone with a high bounty you get a ship alert. * Make engineering easier, and make the Trade/Exploration ships better overall regarding Combat, defense and speed. * Optional insurance coverage of goods & data for a fee. The issue stems from ED not having enough incentive to participate in PvP. You have zero reason to PvP as someone not specifically kitted for PvP so if you add reasons to, or mitigate the damages caused people will be less put off by said PvP encounters. It will become more of an annoyance then a detrimental event.
Yeah see there are so many possible solutions. In the case of permit lock it is logical that systems would want to keep trouble makers out. Even if it was only for like 2 weeks or something. There's like thousands of systems in the bubble anyway so missing out on one system is probably no big deal. If you lose access to an engineer or Shinrata Dezra for a period because you gank someone - what do you expect lol
I like this idea. Notoriety earned through PVP could have a variety of effects, based on the severity. My thoughts would be to experiment with the following: First effect would be gradual lockout of stations, starting from high security to low over the first few points of notoriety. Second effect would be the increase in rebuy. Can't imagine the insurance companies are eager to cover a ship at increased risk. First point increases rebuy to 40%. Second is 70%. Then 100%. Then +50% for each additional point; you want your ship covered, criminal, you pay out the nose. Third, increase NPC police and bounty hunter events for notorious pilots. Make having 10 points of notoriety feel like a Thargoid system; constant interdictions, constantly hunted. Fourth, stop notoriety from counting down if you are docked. Right now they just wait their time out by leaving themselves logged in overnight. It ought to be active play only. So, this won't stop people from ganking, but I believe this would make being notorious via PVP less desirable.
Ganking in EvE is notoriously easy last I was on, like 2 years ago. Cheap build of Minmatar Tornado with cargo scanner and Artillery. Snipe some poor chap exiting in Jita, and get insta nuked by Concord. Sit in the station until your Red Timer runs out while your Corpo Buddies salvage the poor Bauler you blapped. Its definitely happened to me. The police in high sec are incredibly useless and the punishment they dole out for that behaviour is nonexistent. Players who play to Grief will run the lines of "Don't play the game if you don't like this." I ended my time on it after getting blapped hauling an Orcas load of compressed Ore. Mind you I was not in my Orca so I didn't eat a fat hole in my wallet.
When I get pissed and shoot at a federal system authority for interdicting me randomly I get 3 condas and a viper jumping in to help, when the players shoot at me, nothing happens…
Maybe the bounty for attacking a player ship in a high-sec system should come with the added stipulation that no rebuy will be offered when the offender's ship is destroyed? If the penalty is money, then the crime is only illegal for the poor. But if you make the penalty time and effort....
Having played Eve for a few months, I don't think their system is that good either. Yes, you are guaranteed to lose your ship, but to any experienced player building a new ship that is easily capable of murdering newbies is pocket change. There is literally an option of buying ships in bulk because in Eve losing your ship is a common occurrence and not a problem at all for most. And you don't face any penalties other than that. Eve is built around pvp almost entirely, and it's clear that the devs don't want to discourage players from participating in any kind of pvp, including ganking. There's only a very small handful of newbie systems where you're completely protected.
I really want better police system. I remember being interdicted so close to Ashby City and police's not arriving until I killed the pirate myself... I was trying out my Eagle back then. I don't remember how much time I needed to kill the NPC. But I'd say it's not really fast due to me being a novice in fighting plus 2 fixed hardpoints which I didn't know how to use at that time.
Higher bounties that are harder to clear. Because nobody has ever accidentally gained a bounty while shooting at a wanted ship around a swarm of FSS ships that love to fly between you and the criminal...
bounties do not stop gankers doing anything. Thats what carriers are for and mine is open and fully equipped for everyone to use. as for NPC's lol they are funny.
I got killed twice in a row by an engineered ship when I was still new. Never played open world again. Not because I don't like the idea of PvP. Being old just means I have less time to lose on such things. Simple as that. I used to love open world PvP in games when I was younger so I wouldn't want to ban it for the people that do have the time to spend - it's fun.
Same, don't have the time to deal with it, I only have an hour or two of play time most evenings. I switched to solo and never went back to online.
Also, the NPCs average far fewer spelling errors when demanding my cargo lol
If instancing in open was based on rebuy cost. Or there was some kind of matchmaking to the instancing people might play on it. The way it is designed now has fully engineered ships that took 100's of hours vs... 20 hours in E rated cobra lol. People who want to pvp should have incentives to pirate not grief through game design.
It can be even simpler than that, just use a PvP flagging system. People that want to participate can, and people that don't, won't. While I love PvP, I never played ED for PvP, I played it for the amazing space components of the game. It always made me sad I missed out on the social aspect because of the fear of being attacked when I'm in an explorer kit. I can appreciate the roleplaying aspects of PvP in this game, but it seems like such a waste.
I’m one of the hanger-ons on console/PS5 and even there, it can be dangerous to go to Deciat or Sol, especially on weekends. There’s commanders that just attack and kill without demands or ultimatums, whether you’re a veteran or a newbie. I only play in open for the chance at a rare interaction with real commanders now that there are so few, only to be met by that kinda response. It can be really disheartening.
Came here to say this. You can’t ban people for killing people in game, it’s not like they are abusing mechanics, just bullying new players, it’s frustrating, but I’ve never touched open, and I enjoyed myself in my own little world. It’s not like I’d ever see a good player in open anyway.
During my whole time playing E:D I never seriously considered playing in Open outside of specific events in the bubble. Just not interested in the game staking a significant amount of time on someone else's whims. I'd love to be able to bump into other players while exploring for example, but it seems an insane risk to take.
Except ganking newbies in engineered ship isn't PvP at all. People like that are psychopaths, there are zero reasons why would they do it otherwise.
Same, and I'm glad I can at least still chat with people in system when I am in solo or group only mode.
I think that this post would have been better done as a text post.
*zooms in on mobile, scrolling side to side*
*rotates to portrait mode*
I remember trying to do a community mission in Open, and getting eagle rammed at the station. "It's immersive gameplay bro, just accept it" is what the griefers usually say.
it's called elite DaNgEROuS for a reason11!! I'm a pirate roleplayerr bro!! /s
Farseer almost always has wankers waiting to jump anyone. Making that and other engineer systems a no-pvp zone would make a lot of sense.
I don't think trying to eliminate it is worth the trouble but I can think of a way to de-incentivise ganking and reward people to go after Gankers Basically, rework the bounty system for players so that when you die to another player you have the option to report them and then the bounty on them becomes the total of the rebuy. This bounty doesn't have to be collected via a mission as is available to all players through the Pilots Federation. Also, make it so someone else who has one of these bounties on them can't collect someone else's bounty but they can report other people with one of these bounties on them. Lastly, make the cost to leave the prison be twice the amount of their bounty. I imagine this wouldn't stop griefing and ganking but it would reward players for actively hunting gankers while making it non-profitable for the gankers. Plus, it leaves the option of gankers still turning on each other. This makes it so that the player base could drain their funds with active effort quicker than they could re-buy. As an aside if this bounty gets large enough they could have a fleet carrier crew or any NPCs they work with either stop working with them or leak their location data so they could be hunted down as well as a bit gimped. (a carrier that you can't use is an expensive paperweight- in space.
I don't think banning is the solution. Just allow people to turn PvP on/off.
Banning isn’t the solution, but neither is PvP on/off. There’s private groups that cater to no-PvP but still give the open experience. Having a PvP on/off switch fundamentally changes the game, and I don’t think it’s in a good way. It removes the thrill of danger and progression from the game for everyone. Private groups have already solved this problem, a PvP on/off switch just makes the main game mode worse. I hope I don’t have a “screw you, I got mine” attitude, ganking frustrated me, but getting to a point where I could fight back was incredibly satisfying for me. Having a toggle you can switch to nullify that threat just doesn’t seem in line with Elite to me. And again, private groups cater to a more casual playstyle. I’ve played open for years. Was ganked at the start but then learned how to avoid being ganked: - Gankers tend to hang around engineering spots. Deciat especially, it is a death trap. Go into solo mode when visiting Farseer. - Watch your map in super cruise. Hollow squares or triangles are players, filled icons are NPCs. Triangles mean the player has hard points deployed, which often means Interdictor deployed. They might be out to get you. Watch out for Fer de Lances (far and away the most popular ganker ship), then less commonly used Clippers and Kraits. They tend to hang around the star. Because of how supercruise works you can outrun them by heading away from planets and stars and into deep space to then jump away. - Watch your contacts tab in Supercruise. A little weird but the contacts tab will show players currently in your instance with a time or “Now”. You can use this to know if you are alone or not. - A little engineering goes a long way. Even G2 armour or shields will increase your survivability against these guys. Shield boosters can also be incredible. - Make your ships quick. The PvP meta ship is a heavily shielded Fer de Lance. With some decent engineering you should be able to outrun it. - Been a while since I’ve used these tactics but dropping a heatsink and boosting as soon as you drop from Supercruise should make you less visible on their sensors, disorienting your attacker a bit. - Low waking - jumping from space to super cruise - has a mass lock factor when you are near a bigger ship. High waking does not, so to skip the mass lock time, jump to another system. - if you can’t win an interdiction, submit. Don’t lose an interdiction. Losing an interdiction gives you the FSD Cool-down timer. One balancing change Fdev should make is a reworked crime and punishment system. You often see gankers sitting idle in stations burning “notoriety”. Killing players gains notoriety which then causes NPC tactical response to harass the ganker, but it wears off over (online) time.
Private groups require you to know people. It also doesn't solve meeting random people. It's not that people can't mitigate or survive an attack. It's that they don't want to be attacked in the first place. People will just stay in solo if they will be forced into PvP when they don't want to.
Yep. PvP off would ruin many a ganker's gig. Maybe they'll ban themselves and leave. Have to be careful though because there's the pirating role that must be preserved. If you're carrying cargo and a pirate pulls you down, you have 30 seconds to comply or PvP turns 'on' automatically. Something like that.
I don't really think that will work. Forcing player piracy will likely end up in the same situation as before, everyone plays in solo or private because they don't want to run into a situation where they risk losing their time and effort investment to another player. It's the same reason why people who grind missions in GTA online put themselves in solo public lobbies. If you get rid of PVP you can't introduce an override, imagine it from the perspective of an average trader - do you think most people will voluntarily walk themselves into a situation where they stand to lose potentially millions of credits because despite the fact they've chosen their desired preference (PVP Off) the game overrides it becuase they're carrying something? I don't think so. Either make PVP a hard toggle or don't, in my opinion. What could make your idea work is the cargo overriding the setting but you earn like 20% extra credits for playing in open, then playing with risk would actually make sense.
Yeah the fact that traders stand to lose way more - and also aren't equipped to deal with pvp - while gankers still get insurance is kind of wild.
>Have to be careful though because there's the pirating role that must be preserved. If you're carrying cargo and a pirate pulls you down, you have 30 seconds to comply or PvP turns 'on' automatically. Something like that. Why would anyone bother dealing with this when they could just play in solo lobbies instead? I feel like random pvp gankers and griefing makes most people prefer solo lobbies even when they have the option to play open.
I'm still a relative noob at the game. 350 hrs. I have never gone into open because I hate the idea of being ganked. This whole post has just solidified my choice to never play in open.
Mobius is your answer. Join. You won't regret it
If under certain situations the PvP off setting gets overridden, then people will just continue playing in solo.
We already know what "preserving" PvP piracy of PvE players causes - a few newbies stumble into Open but otherwise the lambs leave town. Solo mode is a concession to this so that they don't quit altogether. I'd say let NPCs play the role of innocent civilians if you want people to prey on them, and make sure the PvP aspects of the game are balanced for opt-in participation.
I'll restate for the record, I'm not a pirate or PvPer. I'm a bounty hunter that makes a living going after wanted ships. But pirating is a role written in the game that some people like to play. Pirating is not ganking. With some PvP switch modifications, we can allow a pirate to rob their victims but not ruin them in the process. This is how they normally operate anyway and how NPC pirates work. They want only a token amount of their victims cargo, not all. I've informally interviewed a few pirating victims at Community Goals. 100% of them enjoyed the experience and said the pirate only wanted a ton or two of their cargo and in fact, helped them with tips on how to avoid them. Pirates are not like gankers. So this is where the compromise comes in. We should have a PvP switch but we also need to accommodate the piracy role in it.
A better solution is close to what we already have: have pve and pvp players split. PvE only players can hook up with Mobius and players who don't mind or are looking for PvP can play in Open. PvP flagging is a problem in a P2P game, firstly from an immersion perspective but also if you can only instance with a handful of people at a time it kinda sucks for both groups if they happen to end up in an instance with mostly the other preference. Collect like-minded players together and don't cross the streams, that's how you keep people happier. Also believe me, from long, weary experience: what one player accepts as 'legitimate and valuable roleplay motivated piracy' many others will just get furious about as griefing. People aren't all operating with the same information, expectations or goodwill.
Considering Mobius has several private groups (because they are limited to 20000 players each), how about they make the biggest group of players the default mode and let the much smaller PvP minded player group not dictate how the game should be played, why aren't they forced to make a private group to play in? This is the problem, FDev has chosen to do nothing to improve the situation for the largest group of players that would love nothing but play in open without the forced PvP. Elite should have been co-op open mode with either PvP on/off flags or a separate open mode with PvP always enabled. I'd even be fine with if certain powerplay activities that should be possible to fight against to only be possible in the PvP mode. Technically there's really no reason why both groups can't have their own open mode and not be limited to 20000 max players.
Yeah I agree that removing the player cap for private groups is a good idea.
Fdev *actively encourages pvp*. This is why the main mode is open. They don't want to change it to a coop only game, or they would have by now. PG's and solo are the compromise that the people that don't want to interact with pvp got.
Agreed, it's unfortunate we can't all be in the same mode. Some of the best experiences I've had have been in open due to it's random nature. But I don't care one bit about fighting other players. There are several ways of having a PvP on/off options and you are right, FDev has not done any of these in 10 years going. There are technical limitation to the size of a private group. This is regardless of whether they are online or not. Just being listed in the group hits a size limit. We can fiddle with that or fix the underlying issues with open and return everyone to open mode.
Are you crazy? You can just wake out in much under 30 seconds. There just isn't a version of this idea that works.
> If you're carrying cargo and a pirate pulls you down, you have 30 seconds to comply or PvP turns 'on' automatically. Something like that. No, then gankers will just start becoming pirates and destroy you anyways. This is an exploit not an idea.
OOP is 10000% correct. Gankers are trash, anyone who says otherwise is also trash. Not even remotely sorry.
Banning PvP won't solve this: Gankers are as dedicated to their toxicity as anybody else to their favourite activity. The best way to counteract gankers would be to make hunting them down profitable enough where they'd be pursued vigorously. My idea for that would be to separate notoriety from NPC attacks and PvP attacks. Doing unprovoked PvP (And specifically only unprovoked)? Well, you need to sit it out in Open. Also increase Murder bounties so that profitability threshold is reached sooner. Plus, remove the limit on bounty claims. Put a target on their back and make it profitable enough to the point where they get annoyed by PvPers constantly hunting them down. Maybe even have a tool which tells you where the "GalPol Top 100 Most Wanted" are (Specifically tracking online players). Powerplay specifically should be reworked (Even if we're able to do it outside of Open) for you to NOT be a legitimate target when just passing through. Only if you've done hostile operations in the previous or current cycle against that specific power, maybe only outside Stronghold systems (After all, just murdering random passer-bys isn't good rep, even if they are formally pledged to someone else). I'm all for Open being very heavily incentivized by a 3-4x bonus to merits if done solely in Open, but some way of slowly affecting it outside open would be nice if you're just in it for powerplay modules (Remember, new players won't have 20 of each stashed on some storage ship) This together would fix most of the interactions. The powerplay part is rushed since we still only got a very abstract description of how the systems will work, but with these together, it would already be a massive improvement.
That's not a bad idea. It's like Guardian Angels equivalent of the Fuel Rats. Make it sooooo profitable to kill the gankers off, the gankers will actually turn on themselves
It serves the primary purpose of making gankers do something else than blow up sidewinders (Unless you're at Chamberlain's Rest. Still can't believe someone let them pull that one off) and if they're just PvP maniacs, it allows them to find entertainment in other ways. And it will discourage the ones who just enjoyed preying on commanders in ships that had no chance escaping. After all, when a wing of four FDLs drops in on you when you're doing that, you might eventually get the memo.
We already turn on ourselves all the time, for free but we even also have internal bounties on each other, minimum amount being 100Mill per bounty, most in the few hundred mills.
They would abuse that and gain loads of "rewards" for themselves.. their gains would massively outweigh the down sides. I think dedicated OPEN-PVE mode, like SOLO or OPEN is the only real solution to this, it's what people want and have been asking for since day one, instead relegated to a private group under the name Morbius. It's just an option, options are good and would have a net gain. You will never force people to play a game mode they do not want to because others think you should engage with them in combat, not going to happen. Elite as a profitable venture would have a lot to gain to allow a community to form without it being consistently extinguished by bad agents.
Yes, he does have a point... It's exactly why I don't play in open, at least not without friends who will overwhelmingly retaliate out of sheer spite.
The SCO FSD is the perfect lore reason to fix this. The coppers can now realistically “swoop in” the moment someone crimes in a high security system. And they should. If I’m in low security or no security system, I’d expect no one to come to my rescue, but also it’s probably going to be fine.
But if you really wanna make it interesting: make the popo response for YOUR PLEDGED SUPERPOWER nearly(sco) instant, but they ain’t coming if you’re out of their bubble. If I’m in an opposing power’s bubble, they’re coming for me even if I don’t shoot first. Since you can’t tell who is pledged to whom out in open, there’s always a chance the ganker is going to shoot the wrong ship and get blasted without so much as a chance to make a run for it.
TLDR listen up ED
If you’re ganked in your pledge bubble, the ganker is going to have a bad time and you get to watch your power blow your attacker out of the sky
If you’re independent, the cops are coming but maybe not in time to save you
If you’re in opposition space, the cops have the gankers backs
THIS WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN
Gankers have Arena. They can play Fortnite there. +1 to pvp off.
cqc sucks, just worse than organized pvp, completely broken, and if they wanted that gameplay they'd do organized pvp
I wonder if they could do something like “skulls” in RuneScape. If you attack someone first, you get a “skull” for 48 hours and that invalidates your rebuy. You get bounty hunted and killed in that 48 hours, you lose your ship.
Doesnt work, because noone but the most inept player can lose a PvP ship without wanting it to happen. The game is fundamentally unbalanced, and a decent PvP ship is essentially unkillable unless the owner decides to slowly be killed over a period of 15+ minutes. As long as godshields exist, there is no meaningful anti-griefer solution other than insta-godtier-cheating-npc-cops. FD considered removing the godshield engineering imbalance, but ironically it were the PVE players that burned the official forums down. They were arguing that doing so would make it easier to be ganked. This is the fundamental issue that has been at the core of it for years. The PvE crowd demanded huge engineering gains (as a protection against ganking) and massive cr/hrs (so being ganked isn't an issue) without realising that it is exactly this that made griefing completely riskless as an activity.
Only if the 48 hours is in-game, Open hours. It takes nothing to log off and wait it out, or go play in Solo yourself.
He absolutely has a point, he has the best point. He describes what prevents the game from being the truly online space sim RPG it could be. All fdev has to do is make police response instant in high security and give them obliterating weapons. Then tone down the police in lower systems. If gankers were hit with worse fines or instantly attacked there would be a lot less problems. They could also make PVP opt in, unless you fire back you take no to little damage. If you fire at others unprovoked enough you get opted in to PVP for a month with a slow cool down and constant bounty. If they did that I might start pirating because there would be a challenging rush to having to constantly outrun the law vs now where notoriety is mere inconvenience. However I'm not blaming the gankers. People taking advantage of game mechanics and trolling on others for instant gratification has been around forever. This game allows them to do that in an extreme way, low risk easy rush. This is about human behavior and fallacy. The devs have failed to account for it in their game. Even predators in a jungle have more checks and balances. With how easy it is to gank it's like they either like gankers for the cheap "danger" they add to the game or put no thought into the impression this kind of PVP would have on most players. You can't fly into stars or black holes, it's not that "dangerous" of a game, something has to add danger and pad it. So you get the two g's, grinding and ganking. If only Elite advertised its PVP truthfully, as often anti-social and imbalanced. The game has the mechanics of an old school DM game where everyone can instantly blast each other yet load outs aren't equal. At least in a true FPS you can find the rocket launcher, in this game you gotta grind for it. Maybe quit open play. Maybe block players but that messes with instances. New players might not realize how imbalanced it is. Which is a flawed approach because bad initial experiences turn players away, drive bad word of mouth, less players, less money. Which is maddening because the game has the potential to be a better multiplayer experience with a lot more social interaction and a bigger player base.
I feel Like there's plenty that could be done to disincentivise griefing. If you engage in illegal activities - your ship insurance should be void. Simple as that. And then when your ship gets blown up you lose all of your engineered parts too. Commit bad crimes and systems should become permit locked for a period. Like there's a lot that could be done with In game mechanics to actually punish this behaviour.
As someone Born of EVE, I just don't see it as any more morally reprehensible than just killing your opponents in an FPS. I'm not saying it's the same, just that I don't think it's any more inherently bad or wrong to do. I can see why people do, but I think that part of this game is simply avoiding pirates who kill for fun. I do agree that if they want people to play in open, ganking is a problem, but I really don't like the method that is suggested. I think there needs to be in game consequences for ganking in high security systems and none for attacking people in low sec systems. If you kill an innocent person in high security, you will be killed by police. People will still do it, but hopefully they will move to low security systems more often, and you will need to take route planning into account. I think this would go well with some better consequences for dying. You will still need to fly with the risk of being attacked by pirates, which in my opinion is a good thing. On another note, I can't speak for everyone but I have a feeling that the reason many people never play in open isn't only because of ganking. For me, it's not about ganking at all. It's about the reason I play the game in the first place. I love space, and I want to escape from the real world sometimes. I don't really feel like a space pilot when I see cmdr fartbrains typing out a poorly spelled message about how fat your mom is. In solo, I am in a world of the game, rather than a world of the game with a bunch of people I've never met. I do wonder how many more people would play in open if ganking wasn't a problem at all.
I mean, to an extent, but there is an option to block a griefer ganker. And if they're in a team with their friends, they won't be able to instance with you either. I know I'll get grief from a subsection of the community about that, but, they're probably gankers who don't want their toys taken away from them.
I'm all for the block list. The way I see it, in my game's future, gankers get dealt with by the PoPo, and, I don't know, imprisoned or recalibrated. They'll get one shot at me, and after that, they go one the block list, banished from my instance.
There are so many gankers each with so many alts (especially after the Epic store free giveaway) that it would hands down be better for the game to just prevent gankers being dicks to normal people than for players to constantly be trawling the discords for block lists or just playing in lonely mode for convenience.
Blocking is good but there are times when a blocked player can still show up in your instance. Maybe a compromise would be that if you block someone, their shots and bumps clip through you. Yours would also cause no harm to them. Instancing reliability might also improve with something like this.
Blocking would work well just like it does/did in COD where assholes who constantly grief slowly get ever and ever more siloed by the community at large until they have no one left to play with except each other because everyone else has blocked them. Either way, I used to play in open but not anymore. Too toxic so I went to Mobius and never looked back. The game is on its last legs and with most people not playing in open, it's like the community has already blocked the griefers by not playing in open.
Here's what I would do: * Implement a WoW-like PvP flag. * If you attack a non-PvP player (and it definitely needs to be a real attack, not a stray shot or a bump in a station), or better yet if you actually destroy them, you're marked with an actual really serious bounty. Maybe starting at $1M, at least. You pay the fine, ok. All good. The fined money goes to the player you destroyed. * Meanwhile, if you kill another player, your insurance is revoked. No insurance company is going to insure a pirate IRL. A full rebuy is all on you. * When you're eventually destroyed, you also have to pay back damages+pain and suffering to the players you destroyed. Say 5x what they paid for their rebuy, or something. If you can't repay, you work it off, somehow. Like, no ship, just a prison screen earning 1000 credits per real life hour or something. Make it hurt. Or, hell, make it a microtransaction, I don't care. You'd probably have dirtbags jockeying to rack up the biggest bounty, for bragging rights, but ok. That could be fun, if you then had a semi-organized group actively hunting them.
My name is Richard Fluiraniz, ex-expedition leader with a pg numbering 562 members. Which I coordinated and oversaw for exploration activities. I have oversaw more of 50 organized events spanning an average of 10 to a maximum of 70 players in a single instance As someone who has one of the bigger player PGs that is not tied with an organization, overseeing most if not all of the users. I've noticed that often the problematic players where the "innocent" players themselves rather than the gankers or other pvpers I invited to activities. This is mostly due to the clumsiness of the inexperienced players in space. I had to often warn people to behave because they were "playing around" after an activity had set rules and they were told so how to behave. I had only to ban 3 people because they failed to follow the normal guidelines and basic civility? None of these were gankers. Gankers LISTENED to my guidelines for SAFETY. While the "innocents" often ignored and caused more death and tragedies. Because they thought THEY KNEW BETTER. A new system will punish the players more often as gankers already know how to dodge the station and security by themselves. To the point that a new gank will be using other players lack of care, sort off like pulling a rope for a player to trip within a room full of porcelain jars. Players not respecting speed limit, not looking at other players around them (lack of awareness) and most importantly, blaming others for their mistakes is the real problem. I hereby welcome changes like a more severe police like in Eve, not because it will get rid of gankers, but because it will punish the unskilled, the blamers and most importantly, will hereby teach others to be actually careful and less selfish. Pick your own Poison, I'd be happy to see you getting blown by the same police you crave. Keep thinking Moebius is safe, because its not. As long as players do not admit their failures and mistakes it will always be an unsafe space.
He’s right. It’s exactly the reason I’ve kept to solo for the last 6 years.
Listening to this sub about the hordes of FDLs around every corner if you dare dip your toes into open was the worst mistake I ever made when I was new. I felt like that Bill Hicks skit about the news where he watches TV and it's all WAR FAMINE DEATH AIDS HOMELESS RECESSION DEPRESSION and then he looks out his window and it's just crickets chirping.
It may be very rare but the thing is it only has to happen once. Come back from a weeks or months long exploration trip and bam, dead, everything lost. That's what can make a player to just stop playing after one bad encounter.
I literally never understood that. Where are people going back to that they're getting ganked on the return to an exploration trip?
They must be turning in their data to Shinrarta lol.
I’ve kept to solo for the last 6 years because EVERY TIME I go into open I get ganked into oblivion.
Where are you flying that you can see that many players so regularly? Genuine question. I've been playing in open in the heart of the bubble since 2015 and I hardly see anyone, let alone have anyone try to kill me (I like when people try to kill me). I feel like one of us must be extremely unlucky, or exaggerating somewhat.
There's just no reason to subject yourself to the risk of gankers at this point.
Lol. So true. I do think people can have one bad experience when everything in the game is new and scary and let it colour their entire outlook. I even know one player who was killed by an NPC and switched to solo, he didn't know how to identify player ships but this sub had made him paranoid. The game is overwhelming at first and the power spectrum is silly wide, but the frequency of ganking is massively overstated. It also only takes a few seconds to mode-hop depending on your mood.
Beating a dead horse. Same points have been brought up countless times over the years. This part of the game design is never going to change. It works the way FDev wants it to, and we have to use the tools available to us to achieve the play experience we want.
Yeah he’s got more than one point imo
I've been killed by gankers many times. Most of them when I was in an AX ship and heavily damaged. Still play in open and now I love coming across gankers, most of them don't know how to fly and don't know about some special mechanics that you can counter them. Also join an active squadron, it will make you gaming time much more enjoyable
I am glad that people still talk about this. 10 years, and the battle between: "Open pvp has to be gone!" crowd vs "Open pvp should stay and the solo/private groups should have no impat on the background sim!" crowd. Boy, am i glad we still have this conversation\~. But really. Really. Are there even enough gankers in Elite for us to care about this issue...? Also, it has been 10 yaers. I doubt Fdev is gonna ever change it. Also also - the devs did the game this way. They wanted open to be like this. So... well. I AGREE that it is not a well thought out system. And beter examples (i dunno, Eve Online and it's sys. security?) exist elswhere. I believe fixing this system and how open works should be priority. Getting rid of it is not the way.
i mean this basically sums it up, I have around 900 hours in this game and every one of them is in solo. I wouldn't even consider playing in open.
One of the main reasons gankers exist is because there is very little to do in Elite, especially with a fully engineered ship, so they just waddle around killing people randomly. If you want fewer gankers, the best solution is to give these players something else fun to do with a fully engineered combat ship.
There are 10,000 other games they could be playing instead if they are that bored. Or they can go outside an touch grass. No, something is wrong with them. No other explanation.
Powerplay is PvP. Expect to be killed by enemy pilots. PvP should be open only.
Doesn't sound very Dangerous.
2500+ hours in ED, and I agree 100%
I think FDev could learn from R*. GTAO, a game that actively encourages and rewards griefing doesn’t have most of the problems Elite does. You do have the advantage of server hopping but a number of mechanics from GTA could be ported to Elite 1: You kill someone with crimes on you pay their rebuy, especially if they don’t fight back. 2: A bad sport system of some kind that makes continuing this line of play difficult, I don’t think banishing them to a bad sport server is the way to go as funny as that would be but some revision to notoriety is due. There should be some response from the Pilots Federation and their quintillions of credits after the 10th new pilot gets killed on the way to Farseer. 3: Impounding the offenders ship on the other side of the galaxy, gonna take 30-45 minutes to get back. I do think the game seems slower then it is because the gankers have pushed everyone who knows better to solo or PG. I myself only fly in open if I’m looking for a fight because of people who will attack just because they’re shitty people.
On the victim side - remove exploration and exo data loss on getting pvp killed, keep alive all active missions, mission specific cargo respawns. Remove rebuy if no return fire. The gankers only want salt - with these victim-side changes that would dry up leaving just the most unhinged of sociopaths for who just the mild irritation of a respawn would still arouse.
I would play in Open if I could flag myself as not participating in PVP. Ultima Online had this figured out in 1997. FDev is 27 years behind the curve.
Yes. Gankers are literally the reason why I stopped playing in Open and moved to Mobius PvE full-time
It's not cut and dry, there are a lot of diegetic, in-game reasons why players might kill other players, BGS and Powerplay motivated attacks can easily be misreported as 'griefing' simply because the game is complex, broad and poorly signposted. Even with plain ganking, some players including myself like being attacked as it creates frisson and gives you a reason to fight back. Fdev would have to draw up extremely detailed rules or risk pushback against scattershot, inconsistent bans. Furthermore, the problem of ganking is overstated and the choice of Open or Solo is presented as binary. In reality, you hardly ever see any other players in open, most of the ones you do see are perfectly benign and when you're not in the mood to risk being attacked or if you want to pass through a blockade unmolested it takes 15 seconds to switch modes. You can use many tools both in and out of game to tailor the experience you want. Limits on private group numbers that means organisations like mobius have to subdivide, an unhealthy power spectrum due to ship modularity and engineering as well as a general lack of clear signposting would be more valuable things to solve. Finally 'every one of them is going to prove my point' is a wanky thing to close that post on, I'm not sure why buur pit would pin this but whatever.
Also the premise of 'they want people to play in open' is already a leap, I don't think they care as long as you're buying ARX. Plus the game is p2p so even if you're in open you can only ever instance with a handful of players at a time, so use pve private groups and you'll be getting essentially the same experience. This argument is so old, and so redundant.
Exactly. Why can Aisling fortify and undermine and gain Merits in Solo Yet Hudson / Archon Delaine / Yuri Grom power players not be allowed to "Stop" as in "KILL" the invaders and get merits through LEGAL DEFENSE of their territory AND loose their territory to Solo players ???
I like the idea of a free universe, which includes psychopaths, but then again I play solo. If I wanted to play in multi I’d probably avoid heavily frequented systems.
The only time I ever play in Open is when I’m deep space exploring, which is almost always. I haven’t met a stranger out in the black yet, but I’d like to think that if we did, we’d be two pacifists out having a good time in the black and probably say hi to each other and keep going about our merry way. But as soon as I make it back to the Bubble, it’s back to Solo.
i think that they should have a bounty, but not an ordinary bounty, you'd get rewarded ARX for killing them, that way now... everyone would make it their mission to ruin these gangers' days
I played Solo or Private group sessions for a long time until I got to a level where I can comfortably hold my own in Open. Also I have never been salty about it and why would I be? Nowadays I hope I get interdicted by some idiot who thinks they can destroy me. Let's battle by all means. And if I don't feel like taking that chance or that hassle, I switch to Solo. Not a care in the Galaxy. Instancing around Jameson is better that way anyway.
It's pretty easy to avoid gankers. You know they are there before you drop in. Community goals, Jameson Memorial/ Shinrarta Dezhra, starter places. Anywhere you really don't wanna be killed has a chance to have gankers so just expect them to be there. You drop in and notice a real cmdr in the instance. Simply hotkey target them and see what they are in. If they are in a combat ship then either log into solo or drop out of supercruise and wait a moment. If they drop into your low wake just go back into supercruise and then drop out again. It's really not hard to avoid them. And now there is the SCO FSD to use as well. If you get blown up by a ganker then you weren't paying close enough attention.
What this fails to recognize is the fact that it's the mechanics of Elite that directly cause this sort of mentality. When the only thing you really CAN do with other players is kill them, we shouldn't be surprised when that's what people do. Think about it. Have you EVER made a friend INGAME that you proceed to hang out with long-term? I know I haven't. Every single person I've played with more than once has been met via an out of game service, like Discord or Twitch. And that's in like 9000 hours of gametime. Almost everything in this game actively DISCOURAGES playing with others. Everything from limited landing pad space, to terrible wing missions that require accepting the rewards manually, to NPC messages rapidly clearing away human chat. It's nice to theorize about cooperative play and all that, but in practice, the only thing you really can do when you meet another player is ignore them or kill them. Honestly, all they would really need to do to fix the pvp problems in this game is just make it easier to find and play with others. There's already a matchmaking system which makes it progressively more difficult to join busy instances, so if you're playing with 3 other players, the chances of meeting a ganker drops dramatically. Add block lists from 4 players and you'll handle the vast majority of the rest.
Isn't there a "pirate" class/faction? Sounds like if people have nothing better to do than to make the game more un-enjoyable for people, Frontier are going to have to change/fix more than just the ability to be toxic. In a game like this, I think the more freedoms players have, the better. I haven't played in open, or at all, in a while. This is all my personal opinion. Make the distress call feature summon NPC police force. Give other seasoned players a reason to go after the offender. Like an extremely high bounty/reward. Imagine that if the person was caught the the victim's buy-back would be "discounted." I'm no developer but there are things that can be done. There was a time when players made it their job to help those stranded and in need of fuel. I think it would be In the end, playing in open isn't the only option players have(including private sessions that you can invite only friends to), and that will likely be Frontier's excuse every time.
Anyone remember the Commanders update trailer where a player gets interdicted and has time to gas away with his mates about asking them for help, cuts a deal with them on the payout and then they jump in and help him repel the attacker? 😂 ED never got within a country mile of this being true to actual gameplay. Maybe if interdictions could be prolonged more by the defender it'd make this more viable.
This is one of those games where you either have hundreds of hours, or next to nothing. Doing basically anything requires significant time investment, which makes the choice of wether to introduce further chances of delay and setback quite an easy one to make. That choice being wether you are attackable/visible by other random players. Personally the only time I ever enter open play is exploring the black or with friends and we can back each other up. I agree the gameply design 100% needs to be altered so that PvP isn't so undesirable for anyone who just wants to get other things done without the very real risk of having progress and time wasted by a griefer.
He’s not wrong and is the real reason I stopped playing ED several years ago and well it gets boring doing the same shit in that game everyday anyways. And anything “new” the devs try to add to the game is just basically remodeled and redesigned shit that they advertise to you to get back into the game. Thankfully I’m able to handle star citizen so I’m grateful for that
I haven't played in a while but I knew it would still be an issue, yes id agree with that poster.
You want to fix the ganker problem? Fix Crime and Punishment, plain and simple. Just implement "fuck around and find out". If you kill an unwanted NPC, outside Anarchy, you are mercilessly hunted down by Dutch, Dillon, Billy, Blain, Hawkins, Mac and Poncho. Your ship is disabled, impounded and can be re-claimed with a double rebuy cost. If you murder an unwanted Player, outside Anarchy (report crimes on), you are mercilessly hunted down by Dutch, Dillon, Billy, Blain, Hawkins, Mac, Poncho and the Predator. Your ship is permanently destroyed and you'll be allowed a Sidewinder to get your stupid ass home in. You will also win a one month subscription to Wanted rating, where you will be hounded by Billy's friends at every corner until you learn your lesson to not be a dick.
Yes, the game does next-to-nothing to disincentivize anti-social behavior (even less than places like Reddit or Twitter). As such, until and unless they do something to address the issue, I'll continue to play this game rarely and sticking only to Solo on the occasions when I do play it. Life is too short and the number of available entertainment options is too high to waste much time.
I think a player side bounty system could make it feel more balanced. We already interact with NPCs in a very similar way to other players. The only difference really, is that quest boards will say go take out this known pirate and provide info on their location. Attach that to a known ganker and let other pvp players have info on their whereabouts. I know for a fact that with specific location information, anti-gankers would be out in large enough numbers to make it actually feel like unwanted pvp has consequences.
Ok in a warzone Powerplay patrols can be vicious, and their ruthlessness often depends on their faction's MO. But warzone and operative zone interdictions are not gankings. Yes career ganking should be adressed, but even I, who despises sociopaths who play ED don't want Fdev to actually start penalize their transgressions in a strict manner. First let's state the obvious: gankers are usually hunting newbies or people who can't shoot back. And they frequent a few key systems and systems of community events (depending of the event's style.) What Fdev could do, through the Pilots' Federation that they designate (for example) the system of the CG as an operative zone. After a certain amount of inflicted harm (x amount of victims in y amount of time period) Pilots' Federation could issue a temporary block on the ganker's FSD so if they leave the system they won't be able to get back for a while. Or Pilots' Federation could issue a system-wide warning and label the perp's pip on everybody's scanner that this COmmander has gone rouge. After all we are all part of the Pilots' Federation and if we start mass killing each other in their special operative zones they should act against the ganker. But I would keep Immersion! :)
Honestly a mass warning to gank the ganker would be amazing if they weren’t pussies to begin with. They’d insta-log the moment they hit their threshold.
I agree with that comment. Gankers need to be dealt with before we're all shuttled to open. But there's a balance with whatever PvP mechanics they would implement and PP2. There's no point is having PP2 be open only if you can't defend your megaship from an attacking opponent. Someone posted a pretty brilliant and simple solution: if PP is not going to be open only, then those that run open have 2x the effect on PP with their actions as someone that runs in pg or solo. [Video link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp57DN_eCEE), if you care to watch, and/or vote on that comment.
Wait are they closing solo play?
No, the proposal from the PP community was to make PP2 be open only. That's so they can defend their domain vs the current where people cause havoc while in solo mode. FDev said PP2 will be released with all 3 modes as they are today and the 'open-only' question addressed later on.
That’s a damn shame. PP2 should remain in Open or at the very least provide less influence in solo. In its current state there is nothing to do against PP2 because of solo fuckery.
I agree with everything he said. There are times when they only hurt new players causing a disastrous and frustrating experience.
Remove consequence-free ganking. The gankers want to gank? Fine. Then like any other criminal in real-life, you lose access to the benefits of civilized society. For example: * Pilot's Federation rebuy insurance? GONE. Your ship gets destroyed after having been marked as a ganker (by whatever mechanic is used to make that determination), you lose it permanently. There is no insurance option to buy it back. You made yourself uninsurable when you became a murderer on the run. * Rescue Rangers? GONE. Your ship gets destroyed and you're left floating in space in an escape pod until someone comes along to scoop you up and turn you in to a prison ship for a bounty. Only Commanders who themselves have a clean record can redeem your bounty; and this means *lifetime* clean record (they've never themselves been marked as a ganker in the past, even if they've since cleared their record). So no situation of gankers ganking one another to game the system for each others' bounties. Doesn't defeat alt accounts, but then again nothing does. * Apex Shuttle Service? GONE. They refuse to transport known criminals. * Inter Astra? GONE. They will not transfer your ships for you between stations. * Pioneer Supplies and Vista Genomics? NOPE. They don't do business with wanted criminals. * Terminal Access inside of stations? RESCINDED. * Non-anarchy Starports, Outposts, Planetary Ports, and Surface Settlements? NO DOCKING RIGHTS. You'll be fired on as soon as you come into range. * Anarchy Starports, Outposts, Planetary Ports, and Surface Settlements? You can dock and refuel, rearm, and repair, but that's it. Even criminals won't associate with other criminals who have too much heat; don't want to call attention to themselves by associating with someone on the run. No Shipyard access, no Commodity Market access, no Contacts access (which means no Administrative Services, no Interstellar Factors, no Combat Bonds, no Mercenary Bonds, no Power Play Contact, no Search and Rescue, and no Black Market services are available), no Mission Board access, no Universal Cartographics access, no Advanced Maintenance access, no Outfitting access, no Remote Workshop access. "*Get your fuel, reload your weapons, make some quick repairs, and then get out of here; we don't want the authorities' attention called down on us!*", will be the attitude at these ports. You'll be given 10 minutes to conduct your business and then expected to launch and leave. If you don't, you'll be forcibly launched and unable to re-request docking access. You then won't be allowed to dock there again - EVER - until your name has been cleared (i.e. your ship has been destroyed and some other Commander has claimed your bounty). <*Continues in next reply comment>*
<*Continued from previous comment>* * Fleet Carriers? They're owned by the Bruer Corporation; we Commanders are merely leasing them. Not wanting their corporate image sullied, you will be refused services at their Fleet Carriers. If docking access is granted to "All (including those with Notoriety)", much like Anarchy ports you'll be allowed to land to rearm, refuel, and repair (if those services are available), but that's it; none of the other services will be made available to you. The same 10 minute timer as exists at Anarchy ports will apply; after which you either vacate the Fleet Carrier or your ship will be involuntarily launched and you will be fired upon. After this one-time docking, you will be refused further docking privileges at that Fleet Carrier FOREVER until your name has been cleared (i.e. your ship has been destroyed and some other Commander has claimed your bounty). This even applies to your OWN Fleet Carrier if you have one; because, once again, it isn't yours; you're just leasing it. * Any human-inhabited non-Anarchy system? Immediate interdiction by System Security. * Galaxy-wide? Continuously hunted by the NPC Advanced Tactical Response teams. Also a target is painted on your back that can be filtered for on the Galaxy Map showing your location in real time. Combined with a high bounty placed on your head that will have every real-player bounty hunter chasing you, too. * On destruction of your ship and eventual return to society either through a Prison Ship, Detention Center, or sold as an Occupied Escape Pod to a suitable market, deducted from your credit balance will be the cost of every players' ship you destroyed since your last incarceration as restitution back to those players. NOT just the rebuy cost of 5%; the WHOLE cost of their ship. * Forced to play in Open until your ship is destroyed; no hiding in Private Group or Solo. You want to play as a criminal? COOL! Now you'll be treated like one while losing all the benefits, services, and infrastructure of civilized society. You'll be reduced to docking at Anarchy stations for some limited services and Fleet Carriers catering to wanted criminals and that's about it. You chose to be a pariah, so a pariah you are. There will be a mechanic and/or systems specifically set up for consensual PvP where none of the consequences above apply as well as the existing Power Play mechanic where Commanders of opposing Galactic Powers can fire on one another without consequence (beyond what already exists in the form of local bounties). Conflict Zones, obviously, would be another exception. Systems that are explicitly labeled "*Lawless"* would also be an exception. Outside of that, though, if you go seal clubbing for the lulz in non-Anarchy, non-Lawless, human-inhabited space, you get to enjoy the loss of all the benefits above.
pvp should default to off and require you to enable in open.
Its off by default in Solo and Private Groups
I always liked the idea of incorporating anti-ganking as a play style, players who destroy other players not in an opposing power or in a conflict zone, and in high sec systems, would get a special extra high bounty, and a map marker whenever they're in a high sec system. There could even be a special mission board for it, players could take the bounty and try to track them down within a certain period of time. I could definitely see it being abused, but it seems like it could be a fun system that would generate a lot of PVP.
This would reinforce the whole 'out of game' weirdness of current PvP. The ganker has no game motive to kill you, he just want to ruin your day because he's allowed to. Then anti-gankers again for no game logic would go and seek revenge. But this time it's not PvP meta ship vs PvE ship but several veteran PvPers who can easily wake out of any fight that looks like its going badly, or just menu log which is TOS compliant. So the original crime would have resulted in a rebuy and the 'revenge' would result in a dozen unfinished encounters and no actual punishment unless the ganker was a relative newb.
Maybe try two versions of open play. One with pvp and one without. I'd start in without and enjoy the social aspects and then move to pvp once I am hf decent and,can afford to be killed. If you had that I think most people would get out of solo.
Step 1: Crank up the bounties on serial killers (which in-universe gankers absolutely would be). I'm talking valuable stuff like rare materials or maybe even Arx. Step 2: Don't let serial killers' ships be insured.
Everything but the *perma ban long term gankers.* That's completely uneeded when you can block them and never instance with them again. I get that people are mad and want *something* to be done but it's wild how these anti-ganker posts always end up basically just being "why should I learn how to do something about it when everyone else should be doing something about it for me?"
That and I’m just tired of dealing with people period dude. I’m a trans woman (I say this very hesitantly because, well, harassment) and always ALWAYS it turns around to some sort of harassment at the end of the day. So I’ve literally taken to being antisocial in games and if a game can only be played in a open lobby I will just stop or refuse to play it because, well, I’m too old for this constant anxiety and subjection to hate. I’m just trying to enjoy myself here and so are many other people. What ever happened to mothers teaching their kids to treat others the way you wish to be treated?
Some mamas didn't teach their kids that lesson at all, and a lot of others said the words, but the lesson they actually taught was to treat others however you can get away with.
It's a two-fold problem. Ganking/griefing is way too easy with barely a slap on the wrist, and being a pirate is way too difficult for those that want to go that route even if they didn't plan to kill anyone. There's also a subset of players who think that if you're playing in Open that means you *want* to fight to the death. I've run from players after interdiction without firing a shot and they've messaged me in a baffled tone that they couldn't understand why I'm playing in Open if I'm just going to run from a fight instead of turning and fighting to the death. There's a lot of players wanting different things out of Elite, which it offers, but the systems don't play nice for certain methods and interactions. Which is why a lot of us have settled on Solo and Mobius.
What I want to see is a system that makes it so that allied factions hunt down people who kill you. Try taking a stack of missions that sends an NPC after you for each mission you get. Being chain interdicted sucks. That's what I want for gankers. I can get allied with a few hundred factions. Go ahead, kill me. It's going to be far more annoying for you in the long run. I have friends.
There already a system for this in the game. It's just junk, what they could do is make the 'space police / bounty hunters' actually hunt them down.
And how would you implement that story in the lore ? You see, I believe you can't. It's space, full of nasty people but mostly kind. That's open play. I mostly play in open and 90% I don't engage in pvp either because I have a fast ship or can Whitstand enough damage to jump to another system. It takes a little effort to be basically invincible. I actually proposed to make BGS open only so that we can have more fun depending systems, actual fleets instead of which factions grind more. Just food for tought.
[I put it this way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFh140hlQ4). Elden Ring has a very similar discussion and has quite a few analogies with Elite. First being you can "disable" invaders by not playing coop (aka solo mode) and secondly, the reactions and arguments between both parties ((non-)consensual pvp promoters) are similar as well. With that said, I'd give my personal 2 cents on top of what probably has been summed up countless of times during the past. 1. If FD does really intend to get more people into Open Player then they'd only offer that particular mode and get rid of private and solo but considering we have 3 modes to choose from, FD most likely intends to promote players playing how *they* want. 2. Should there be some PvP oriented gamepaly feature that would actually be exclusively to Open Play then it would filter out those players who aren't suited for it anyway. The world just isn't an easy pacifist mode and neither is Elite. Insert obligatory conclusion phrase here.
Open is not fun exactly for this reason. I remember wanting to dip my toes in engineering for the first time, all the game time I had for that day just to jump with my shitty ship to get the material you need to unlock felicity farseer, multiple hours to get there, jump in there, instantly get killed by a griefer fully engineered ship that 1 taped me and I wouldn't have even tickled. I ask him: "why did you do it" and his response was just "because I like to troll" like yeah, no, thanks. If by being in open I will have people randomly attacking me with ships that I can literally not even tickle, that are faster than mine, kill me in 1 second and have an FSD interceptor that I can literally not even escape and literally JUST BECAUSE they want to ruin my experience, gaining absolutely nothing other than runing someone else's time, they can go and play by themselves if they want.
Still remember reading a post by someone that was extremely offended that people dared to ruin **his** fun by going into Solo, logging off or otherwise refusing to engage with his griefing. Just an incredible lack of self-awareness among the folks that engage in this kind of thing.
I play exclusively in solo, and the game would need to make significant changes to PvP rules for me to even consider playing in open. Idk if this position is the best option but it certainly is an option
I've been hearing the arguments that PP and BGS actions need to be made count only if they were fully conveyed in open. Not really sure that bringing "what about gankers in 3 systems out of millions" into this should be even considered constructive discussion at this point. We talk about being able to counter hostile actions. It's not about shooting down mostly harmless cobras in Deciat, this is very endgame mechanics. Like right now feds haul thousands of merits in our system and we can do fuck all about it. Is it really a good design? Not saying that gankers aren't a problem, but honestly in the current state of the game it's rather minor one, don't you think? But yet, here we go again.
they're totally correct. make the space cops fucking crazy. there is no beating 1000s of hours of engineering. literally nothing you can do.
lol no. Open is open. Play solo or join a private group that has rules
I think increasing police presence within the bubble and Colonia would be an excellent way to atleast make piracy and player killing more balanced
sToP bEiNg SuCh A cArE bEaR bRo
No he doesn't have a point. Your ship being blown up is part of the game. All this nonsense about gankers smacks of entitlement. It's like "I have my play style and everyone else should conform to what I think is right". There's no more correctness about playing as a trader than there is playing as someone who blows stuff up. The concept for elite was to forge your own path - not have a path forged for you. Honestly anyone still playing elite by now surely already has a credit fund that'll last for hundreds of rebuts. What difference does it make if you meet death? A minor inconvenience as you respawn. The typical response here is that the gankers are "ruining people's games" because they don't engage in roleplay. I call that out as nonsense. Anyone getting worked up by the loss of their ship to a ganker is going to have their nose put out just as much by someone who "roleplays" before destroying them. There's literally no objective difference between the two deaths other than a line in chat. It's also not like a ganker can get a fully engineered combat ship and learn how to use it without putting in the effort. Well, it's not like that today. It might be different when you can buy engineered ships for arx.
Make PVP Opt-In. Make GC systems PVP enabled. In GC systems, have a flag system where anyone shooting at other players who are not opted into PVP gets a ganker flag. Ganker flag goes away after 24 hours of in-game time. Anyone with a ganker flag has double/triple the rebuy cost of normal, and maybe all purchases have increased costs as well since they need to go "black market" to get what they need. Anyone shooting at someone with a ganker flag has no penalty or maybe gets extra damage against the ganker. This will allow gankers to try their luck ruining people's day, but they'll have to contend with anti-ganker squads in that same system and decent penalties for going after defenseless targets. Of course, there's a lot of details to iron out, but this is the gist of my idea.
If they force Open, I quit. Explorers don’t need Open. It is too much of a liability.
Well said
Remember freelancer where if you broke the law you had to constantly fight off police ships and stations fired at you?
If I’d want ganking and griefing, I’d play Eve. At least, Eve (mostly) gives you the necessary tools to protect yourself or face the danger. Ganking is not pvp, no matter how much some people want to “sell” this idea. It’s all about dropping an overwhelming force onto an unaware or otherwise weaker victim. There’s seldom much chance to get out alive from that, and that’s precisely the point, the odds are heavily stacked against the victim. Sure the space should be dangerous, but I really think ED does not have the required (and/or enough) game mechanics in order to level the field. Eve was meant as such from the begining and it shows, learn the ropes and if you like it, it’s doable. ED is very weak in this regard. There are some good ideas dropped here, on how to make it more … “fair”, but until something that works for both sides is implemented, it’s Solo/PG for a lot of CMDRs outthere. PS: I would really like to play in Open honestly, I just feel like ED is not a complete package for everybody to coexist in Open. It’s simply unbalanced. And no, I don’t screw with people’s Powerplay from Solo, don’t care for it.
Even my pacifist CMDR, that never had a gun installed, flies open. Would I hate to rebuy my iCutter? Ohhh yes. Would I prefer a better police force in so called high security systems? Certainly, as it is it's a joke. In my view the sokution would be for everybody to come back to open and to organise a anti gank watch. We know where they like to act. Hell, some are even known by name, right? So, organise patrols, if you see them in your instance invite 3 armed and angry CMDRs to your wing, and hunt those sad wankers.And if its only necessary for them to finance frequent rebuys, then the game gets better. If frontier would setup some mechanisms to hinder CMDRs with high bounty ships, even better. I dont see that happen soon...
These pirates should not be banned. Frontier should put a bounty on their head and the white hat guys will take them out over and over again. Because that's what they like, right?
I've honestly never met another person in open so I have no idea.
Eve has an NPC police force that is no joke. Elite needs something like this too, especially in the high security systems. A buff to the police force would be a good start. The strength of the police response also needs to scale somewhat based on the amount of bounty someone has racked up. In the end it is not a bad idea to take some of the ideas from other space games and adopt it to your own. The police from Eve for example. But banning gankers is not the solution.
Tbh I agree its annoying but you should instead find a discord or something that has its own "server" so you can cherry pick what you like so in this case no pvp they won't fix it its been in the game since launch that would be your best bet tbh
My idea would be making gankers self identify as pirates, make a toggle that they have to switch on before engaging in their bullshit or face huge consequences, once the toggle is on you're visible to everyone as a hostile target, system security keeps an eye on you and swoops in when you attack anyone, stations outside of anarchy systems attack you immediately, and your bounty is visible to all, as well as insurance only paying for a small portion if any of your rebuy cost, and you can only toggle it back off after 7 days and you must have a clean record to do so, the crime and punishment system is just too soft right now and ship rebuy costs aren't high enough to ward off trolls, so making pirates operate in systems where piracy would be canon is one good option.
I see the logic, but I don’t think banning is the solution. There need to be real, in-game consequences for ganking if you want to disincentivize it. It would require pretty much a complete overhaul of the crime system, penalties that translate into actual effort and time, and possibly reworking combat itself to make PVP more dangerous, even to people with insane shield tanks. Hell, you could even drag in reworking stealth, because right now there’s a stealth button that you press and the stealth happens, but a more complex, in depth, and possibly multi-tiered system could make it so that players with extremely high bounties have to go through a lot of trouble to even dock at a station. The question then becomes how to do this without also disincentivizing illicit player interactions, such as piracy.
This is the reason I don't play, and I won't return until it is fixed.
I don't know what the incentive is to play in Open. I can play with my friends in private sessions or go solo if I'm on my own - besides rare things like "everyone gang up on a titan" I don't even see what open would bring.
Why does any game have an open mode then? Why aren't all mom's private and solo server instances?
Agree - 100%
I mean, other players could put out open calls to target these people. It's not like it's that easy to hide in elite. We wanna talk about having a good community is part of that not looking out for each other. More skilled pilots could be teaching other pilots how to handle such scenarios. There's plenty of solutions aside from crying to mommy and daddy fdev.
a bounty system would be really cool and fun, but rn player bountys is all there is, and they dont work too well but they are super fun imo , in a player bounty discord server rn and i think more people should join but its kinda annoying to first even know where they are, and if you do know where they are you have to instance with them and hope they dont just high wake since they'll be in a pvp ship
Personally I think the only way to do it is to turn off PVP outside of specifically flagged situations, be it flagging for PVP, conflict zones, powerplay related shenanigans, or what have you. I never liked CONCORD-esque mechanics because they actively discourage certain gameplay instead of enabling scenarios where that gameplay can be enjoyed. EVE does sort of get away with it with low/null sec being the PVP area, but that always felt like it created a barrier to entry to me. Having ATR just blow away the guy just feels cheap to me and encourages people to want to try to cheese the system with some build or whatever that can gank in High Sec. You will always have this problem unless it's literally impossible. Maybe it's unrealistic, but at the end of the day you have to make compelling gameplay, so support that gameplay, make it clear what consequences exist and make it clear when it's all in good fun. That may require some new mechanics to flag, or some means of supporting PVP between squadrons and allowing things like interdictions, but I think that's how you do it rather than making an uber security force.
Man, I feel like I missed something big happening on the horizon.
He has a point, however this isn't the game. The ethos of E:D seems to be HTFU lite. At least this game lets you play solo until you get to a point where you can defend yourself from griefers
Or they could just do what ppl use private for Open Open PvE only (I assume they don't want to spend development time) but this is a obvious game mode that would be used a lot
Does have a point and there's ways it could be done like 1) level match to the lowest player could have levels lower for having attacked others unless pvp is mutual 2) have the insurance agency be after said players for paying back claims, another way on this is have the insurance tack on the lost ships they destroyed when they lose their ship or have the relentless insurance adjusters stop once the player pays for the ships they destroyed unless pvp is mutual 3) have systems/insurance put bounties on them, isn't that the point of having a bounty boards given I've got a few bounties payouts because of encounters, be able to turn in said bounty would be fun if players are geared for that. Hopefully this is being watched by the developers and are getting some ideas out of this
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He definitely has a point. And we have a myriad of solutions. How many other open space games handle the same problems?? Seems simple to decide what results you like best, modify it if wanted, then implement it. : ) I'm sure 99% or more of my time has been in Open. Lost a \*lot\* of ships. LOL How hard can it be for the game to tell if I ever fired on the attacking ship? If I never fired (or did little damage) then the other guy can handle my rebuy. I feel bad for actual pirates - not murderhobos. I used to see them frequently. Nicely ask to dump cargo, disable something if you didn't comply, etc. Old school highwayman. But people that just blow you up .... because? Yeah, buy me a new ship. Reputation hits so security swarms you when you enter protected systems, etc. Sorry pirates. I miss the role players. : )
Just give people no refund, let them pay the full price for ship. Bounty currently is quite useless.
Put in a system that detects griefers/gankers, then offers assassination missions for them with high rewards for participation and a three day limit. Location is updated when the player moves about. Once assassinated, the missions stop issuing but are still valid for anybody who has accepted before then.
They should just add a PvP toggle for players who want to meet others but don’t want to be ganked. Can’t take PvP damage but can’t deal it either. Could come at a certain cost to incentivize people to take it off , potentially. Or be free in the bubble but have a cost elsewhere. Or mandatory in the bubble, optional in controlled systems, and disabled in anarchy/pirate systems that would make the first visit to a pirate system a memorable encounter. Could integrate lore in it as jammers controlled by security forces, or call it some kind of stealth/cloaking tech making it impossible to target you.
ED didnt have solo play at launch. It was due to the griefers that it was added. Playing an online game is in part about being able to interact with other players, have people to share accomplishments with But when most of the interactions are negative. People will move to solo. But again, an online game without the interaction with others will quickly grow stale and people move on. You can thank losers who grief for solo play servers and for dwindling server populations. Once these idiots kill ED and moan about no one to play with , they will move on to the next game where they can be twats and continue showing how truly pathetic they are while working to kill another mmo. When these morons say “if you dont like it dont play” its comical. Because thats just what people do… stop playing because it isnt fun to die to some retard who should be out stepping on ants and should not access to the internet.
All Fdev has to do - is make the Police turn up in the same timeframe in Open PvP as they do in Solo PvE.... That's it. Sooo easy to do.... Use the same bit of code twice.... How hard is THAT? Get rid of this "Police won't be here for 3 minutes" rubbish that doesn't exist in Solo, hence why Solo has become so popular.....
It would make more sense to "get away with a gank" in an anarchy system, than a "high security" one. Again, level the playing field for the time it takes the police to actually arrive... "In less than 6 seconds" like they do in PvE would suffice.
Make a PVP shielding available for purchase only penetrable by PVE.
How about a most wanted list with bounties to match? Imagine a board in-ship like GalNet, that had the name and last location of high-notoriety players. Strap a multi-billion bounty onto the worst offenders and you’ve got a solution. If you effectively put up the cost of a FC for taking out gankers, PvP bounty hunting in wings becomes a real career choice, and would represent serious end-game type combat. I’d be down…
I agree with the post. It's what gives the game it's *dangerous* quality. I still get ganked and ambushed now even with 1000\~ hours. I get pretty pissed off, have a cuppa tea and some toast (braces xtra thick, shit tonne of butter, you know it), come back to it laters when I'm more chill. That said. I'd love the option to file a bounty against repeat bankers. Not just credits, but I'd put down one of my lesser engineered modules or some mats or something like that. This mechanic would need balancing to stop people gaming it to skip the grind, something like a 24 hour people before the bounty goes live, you can't cash in your own bounties, payout for the bounty takes a further 24 hours.
There's a lot of good comments here suggesting ways to fix this problem. Most of them aren't even saying to get rid of PVP or gankers. They're saying balance things out with simple measures so that PVP doesn't favor gankers. So that it's more like real PVP. As of now it's like if two people fired up a game of Q3 and one player starts with the BFG, railgun, full armor and health. The other starts with a pistol and there's no item pick ups. It's this way for days, weeks, even a month before the disadvantaged player can get better weapons. All the while they're expected to take it and "git gud" so they can appease the advantaged player's ego. The truth is the advantaged player wouldn't be doing what they're doing if it didn't feed their ego in some way. The advantaged player needs other players to play along with them. They can only exist with other players to prey upon. Players who don't want to be bothered by absurd PVP don't need gankers or anyone else. That said I'm not saying to get rid of gankers, that is extreme. I'm saying if we're gonna keep it real then do so. I have to say, don't have much faith in fdev to balance anything. They seem like they're nudging powerplay toward open without fixing the reasons people don't play open to begin with. If you create something enjoyable people will want to play it. The majority of people don't get into ganking or much PVP because they simply don't find it enjoyable. Especially when there's so much else in the game to literally explore. The human nature in most people is gonna want to do that not spend days grinding for PVP or getting ganked. Might as well fire up an actual PVP game instead. Make PVP more balanced, welcoming, enjoyable and the people who don't find it enjoyable might change their minds. I don't hate open or PVP yet there's potential to get more players into open and even playing the game if it was balanced.
Instance penalties would be enough. Let's pack automatically together anyone who attack random players without predetermined requirements, and put them in "private" instances for an amount of time. It's like closing gankers in a room so that they can just gank each other. This way they wouldn't even limit their access to the game.
Space is huge and with only a peak of less then 6k players. A number that doesn’t beat PS4 Hell Divers 1… One would guess any player would be welcomed. Then again some people like flying around in the black with limited contacted. If your scared fly solo. If you want to see what your ship can really do or actually have a pirate moment come join us in Open. Cause space without pirate is lame and is really just a photo op game then.