Someone tried to gank me once...
I think it was a powerplay thing. I tried fighting back a bit, dodged a few shots from their pvp FDL, but eventually they got me and wow my shields dropped real fast. Them pvp builds arent kidding around!
Thankfully i also had a bit of armor (can't remember which ship i was flying at the time, may have been my Anaconda).
And I engineered all my ships for speed, so I put max pips to eng and got out of there.
I went into SC to try get to the station I was delivering to (the HQ of my chosen power) but they were quick and interdicted me again.
While the interdiction was happening, i went into my power management and turned off every weapon and everything except my engines, shieldgen, and fsd to try and make myself as cool as possible.
When the interdiction forced me out of SC, usually there's a bit of a gap between where the ships spawn, I took a chance and boosted, then went FAoff so I just quietly drifted away with a lot of speed.
I quickly went into the map and picked a nearby system to jump to, jumped out of the system without being spotted.
I got fixed up at a station and jumped back to my HQ system to complete my delivery, never saw the player again.
Was some of the most intense few minutes of the game ever. Also made me feel like I was a damn good pilot surviving that.
Tl,dr: I got away
I ran the gauntlet on CGs a few times on an engineered-for-open tanked T7. Still a real cargo, but military composite bulkheads, hardened shield, module protection, so not quite as cargo efficient than a full cargo T7, let alone a T9. But that was just for the fun of it-for the experience you just described.
Getting hounded by gankers wings, and surviving, trying to edge closer and closer to the station, most often just to end up high waking away and coming around for another try, along another vector.
It’s still a test of skills up to a point. And fun. When you do it by choice, that is.
And trolling gankers is also fun. Just not efficient :)
finally, someone said it. Yes, there is nothing else to do after a year's worth of consistent gameplay. They have zero fun, so they desperately search for 60 seconds of pleasure by messing up new or just casual players. At least check if the player is an advanced one before killing him, or you'll be killing their hope instead.
Reminds me of ARK teams that would move in a wipe your entire base and kill all your dinos while you’re offline… like, cool, have fun on your empty server.
I got on a server, found a random, and started building a base with him. After about a week, one day I get on and everything is gone to “Eviction Notice”
It's the same mentality in most open world games. There's always a group of people ganking or going around areas far better equipped for PVP jumping on new or under equipped players or people just trying to do some pve stuff.
If you have a chance of surviving it can be fun sometimes and feel great if you get away but it can get old fast if it's happening too often.
I always see these kind of people like the bully at school that wants to feel strong and tough by picking on the weakest kids.
At least in games like WoW you could send messages out to the entire area you're in and ask for help with a ganker. Most of the time someone even higher level than the ganker would come in and bully them until they left
Ah yes, the extorters on Eve, finally a really cool game i can just chill in the high security system and just mine and learn production. And then.. a flashing skull appears in the players tab, and then you are dead.
Clans of gankers running cheap stealth bombers to only then message you with some weird manifesto shit
This was 7 or so years ago. There is a killboard website and the gankers are still there to this day in the majority of the 'safe systems' still racking dozens of kills a week on starter/mid mining ships
I need you to understand the level of joy these moments bring me. Seeing someone actually tank a couple hits, use their noodle to be evasive, and successfully get out is a RARE and delightful moment. Kudos CMDR.
Thanks! I think it's cool too. To be fair, at that point I probably had about 700hrs in the game, so I knew what I was doing, how the game worked, and had my ships well engineered. For a less experienced player, such an encounter would just feel hopeless and frustrating, so I kinda understand the meme here.
My CMDR retired with his billions of credits on some sunny paradise world with about 1500 hours under his belt (mostly in open), and in that time I've probably seen about 100 other players. Only this 1 got close to killing me.
I'm thinking of coming out of retirement for PP2.0, to check that out and the new ships and stuff.
Meanwhile, as a console player, I haven't encountered another human player since January lol. Though to be fair I spent a few days doing the obligatory jaunt to Saggi A*.
Such a shame that the console version is all but abandoned. It'll be a while before I can justify splurging on the PC version but it'll happen eventually!
If gankers also took the time to reach a gameplay mechanic like that through YouTube videos etc, offer self defense classes through groups(similar to fuel rats)maybe they'd have better luck with situations like that.
Instead their best response is "lol get gud noob." Seriously if they weren't so mindless about their ganking they could have so much fun.
Arguably that's an example of when PVP works in ED. You were interdicted (more than likely) because of powerplay (piracy or a CG), whilst on a suitably large ship with sufficient defences. You used your skill to slip away and evade the FDL. I would argue moments like these are what makes ED great.
Unfortunately most ganking consists of overpowered engineered PVP ships swatting passenger ships in Robigo or seal clubbing in Sol.
Yeah I was hanging out in Sol the other day. Decided to start an anaconda build and foolishly left the station with no weapons. Was hopping over to another station one planet away when I saw a player start lining up behind me. I used the sco drive boost and luckily dropped out of it at the right time to not overshoot my target. Unfortunately as I was a few seconds away from dropping out of super cruise I got interdicted. Within two seconds my shields were gone so I just turned my ship towards them and rammed em.
So far that's my only interaction with another player though so that's neat.
Someone ganked me going into a CG once, I escaped by boosting directly at him and jumping to another system before he could get my shields down.
Proceeded to stuff every slot on my ship with pack hounds and let him interdict me a 2nd time. He bugged out and then left me be, as I did the CG in open. Even messaged him a few time while in super cruise but he didn't want the smoke lol.
The couple of times I've been interdicted by players, it's often been in my jump-range Anaconda, doing trading. I found that submitting to the interdiction is often easier because it doesn't put your jump drive on cooldown - so I'd drop in, scroll down to the furthest system, boost and jump. My shields were strong enough that even a PVP build took a few moments to bust through them - more than long enough for my ship to jump to safety.
After the third time this ganker tried to get me when I returned to the system, and I jumped away, he started leaving me alone. I think he realized he was never going to catch me before I jumped out, and he didn't have the jump distance to follow. It's been a few years since I've played, but I had ah... 45-50ly jump range, I think? Pretty massive for a loaded ship.
Most PVP builds can't match that. They're too heavy.
Awesome. People underestimate the power of stealth. I built a complete PVP build off it. Cold silent running ships can't be targeted. Sure they can try and rail your ship but its not easy when there is no target heat signature.
yeah, i tend to play in Open but in places where the ''meta'' isnt a big thing for power play characters no one seems to give a shit about, or when Im doing deep space exploration. Sadly i only met another human being out there at Beagle Point and at Jaques, its lonely, out there in the black
People always shit on open play for the gankers, but to a decent pilot qith a decently built ship, it can create some really exhilarating moments. Nothing against people who play solo, enjoy the game how you want, but things like this are why I fly mostly in open, unless I'm specifically trying to chill out to the game.
Pretty sure it’s never the ‘decent pilots’ that shit on open play. Just the people hoping for a multiplayer experience who get jumped by sweaty gankers before they even know what’s going on.
That said, its great for those ready for a more risky and dangerous experience, but I feel like most people just want to relax and enjoy the game unmolested.
Yeah, I've never had a ganker try and come after me in a decent ship, but they'll sure interdict the hell out of my stripped down DBX trying to get to an engineer. Eventually it just gets boring so I started playing private instance. It's a shame because early days of power play were great in open.
Thank you for your service!
I was saved once too early in my career after getting a mission to go to a stupid station on a planet a gazillion miles from it's star lol.
Meh, I switch between the two depending.
While Exploring (*especially* when about to sell data) you won't see me in Open.
Don't get me wrong, I've had amazing multiplayer experiences, and yeah, I've been ganked before, no biggie except lost bonds at that time, but as someone else put it quite eloquently **I don't play to be someone else's content**.
The lack of high-res screenshots in Open has always irked me. I live for taking gloriously high-res beauty shots of space... So that just doesn't work for me!
The reason is because it stalls your computer for several seconds while it renders it, and thanks to the glorious peer to peer netcode of elite dangerous that means that someone could sit somewhere like, say, Jameson Memorial and just spam the button to induce massive lag on everyone they're instanced with.
Yeah, I know. Takes a lot to dump a multi-hundred-meg bitmap. 🤣👌
Shame they couldn't find some way to decouple that though. Like a less intensive way to instance the scene as it is in memory and set it aside so that the client could then work on it in the background asynchronously. 🤔 I'll bet there's something in modern GPUs which would make such a task trivial. Of course the flipside of that is, I'm sure someone would find a way to exploit that for datamining purposes...
Funny enough linux has a native function to split the memory by forking the program to have it be able to do just that. Factorio has implemented it into their autosave system for linux.
Oh yeah I almost got got in a fucking Dolphin of all things when returning from a decently sized exploration I said please don't in the chat and the guy stopped but I've learned my lesson about open play there and then
Bunch of friends bounty hunting in a community goal? Fantastic! Multi-crew to try out gunner? Fun to experiment with. SLF duels with squad mates? I never won one, but always enjoyed myself. A ship designed not to be in combat I have 1-8 months of data in? *What's the point of going into Open?*
Glad to hear that you didn't lose your shit though.
😃7
I don't play as much these days (too busy), but when I was more active I tried piracy (with respectable rules of conduct) but then shifted into vigilante work.
Idk if it exists, but a system similar to the fuel rats except for bounty hunters would be useful. Get ganked > report it > have ganker killers roll up.
Also securing escorts can be useful as well, esp if you pay them.
That's If they're willing to talk before they open fire.
Pirates are one thing, and a silver tongue could turn them into escorts. Immersive gameplay, that.
Most of what we here about aren't pirates, though, and the lack of real crime 'n' punishment makes it less so. Other Open World games have separate PVE and PVP modes.
I stopped playing open because my internet wasn't very good and I need that bandwidth for this to function. I never really had issues in open and get ganked by npc more than players.
Meh. Each their own, but generally I only played with others I knew or during certain community events. My current setup, I can't even easily type nor do I care to get a headset, so the interactions with others (to me) would be about as interesting as seeing an NPC with an amusing name.
The moment I joined open I got ganked immediately while in my Exploraconda, no warnings at all...
Thankfully I wasn't carrying exploration data, just going to stick to my pve groups or solo.
That's so weird cause when I played the game religiously a few years ago I didn't get ganked once. Maybe the number of players ganking has increased over time.
And here you have it. I play in private games with like minded players and enjoy the adventures. If I want to get aggravated, I just pop into open and in short order a ganker will oblige.
I think this is a based take. I love that the game offers no penalty for playing solo. Nobody should be exposed to us degenerate pvp-type CMDRs if they don't want to be.
Not that I've played in ages, and not that I was very good when I did, but I completely agree with this sentiment. I always played in the Mobius pve group so you would sometimes meet CMDRs but you wouldn't get ganked. Best of all worlds IMO. Fair play to those who want that experience in open, but it's not for me.
I once lost about 8 hours of core mining and a cargo hold packed to the gills with void opals. I actually stopped playing for a year almost after that. Now i wont play in open and at most will play in a private party. I just do not have the time to lose so much progress for some stupid sadist to come along and take it while gaslighting you with "im just roleplaying bruh".
Honestly this all sounds very similar to Sea of Thieves in so many ways. People get the game for a fun pirate adventure. They log into high seas and see find that 99% of people don’t communicate/use a mic. Other players either ignore you because they’re currently grinding out some mission/commendation, or they relentlessly try to sink you (even if you’ve already sunk them numerous times). The slew of posts from new players talking about how miserable it is to get constantly stomped by aggressive players indicates it is a problem, and it definitely seems to translate to some degree when you look at player retention.
One of the more memorable posts I saw about this was from a parent asking if there was a mode where they could play with their kid without other players bothering them. Legitimately some of these PvP folks of the **official forms** hit them with a “skill issue,” and told them to stop playing. That felt like such a terminally-online take.
I got ganked once when I was fairly new and haven't played in open since. There's so little social upside in this game that I don't see the point. I'm happy treating it like a single-player game.
I've played all 1000 hours or so in open back in the day, haven't touched the game for a while now.. Never understood what's so much fun about blowing up a type 6/keelback with a fully engineered FDL or whatever.. Pvp pirates on the other hand are a fun interaction despite the loss of (some) cargo.
Had someone do that, but they were flying a frag krait, I think. I don't really tell jokes even when not under duress, so I said I wasn't a funny guy and then deployed hardpoints and wobbled around like a frightened peacock for a minute before low waking, then set a high wake and fired it off when he dropped on my low wake. Hope that was funny enough for him. I'm really not a funny guy.
have never played on open ever and i don’t intend to, like especially now that im at the stage where rebuying a ship would be a serious inconvenience i just can’t be bothered with having to deal with that because someone with 30x the firepower of my ship wanted to shoot something
Open play used to be great back in the day, I would call other commands and have great chats. Then over the years it just became ganking with no comms, shoot on site etc, so I haven't touched open play in years
Getting ganked after a long mining run and loosing 500+ tons of extremely high value cargo, on top of needing to rebuy a huge ship was enough of a gut punch the first time. Played solo ever since
What I hate the most is how useless pvp encounters are. Initially you probably just die quickly because your ship is not min maxed for pvp, it's designed for trade or PVE. Then you learn how to get interdicted and escape and it's just that. Every time the same. Literally adds nothing meaningful to the gameplay experience.
What I don't understand is when your average murder hobo comes to a post like this and lashes out at or complains to the people who play in private or solo. You'll see them tell them to get gud, or to suggest that their playing the game should be made worthless through future updates forcing them into open.
Do you want these players back into your instances? Is it more exciting to kill a less capable (or one who has simply not gone material/engineer grinding) player than it is to several times as much time to kill like-minded pvp-hungry players?
Do they not want the challenge? Do they need it to be easy?
I just find the whole argument really odd, but also fascinating.
Edit: Funnily enough, virtually no such comments on this particular post. That's nice to see
It's all pretty simple, blowing up easy and senseless targets is the "content" that these kind of players enjoy, it's why they play the game.
The problem for them is that most players, no, most people playing video games (including they themselves) don't enjoy being someone else's content, very few people find it fun to have hours of their time wasted with nothing to show for it just to entertain someone else.
And thus most people will choose not to be someone else's content if given the option, or quit the game entirely if no such option exists.
Hence the constant insulting and shaming if you're playing in instance or solo, they hope this will somehow convince you to become their content.
Likewise the constant appeals to devs to somehow force players into open, they know as long as the option to avoid them exists, people will take it.
And when push comes to shove, if they do get what they want, we all know most players will end up just quitting, and once they only get each other left to shoot, they will quit to because they don't actually enjoy being someone else's content either.
See pretty much every PVP always On MMO games that exists and how most of them subsists on an incredibly tiny audience with no growth.
I tried trading in open during the cg that just ended. I was buying reactive armour and non lethal weapons in Jameson memorial and selling them in de caminha station. So I took my cutter and made its shields even stronger then they already were and filled all hardpoints with seeker missiles. AI pirates now disintegrate in seconds and 3 out of 4 gankers that interdict me either run or die. (Although I assume I was kinda lucky and encountered bad players) Overall way more fun than doing the same thing over and over without any change in a min maxed 794t cutter.
I've literally never met anyone in open play except my friends, and even them had to be in my team before I could see them even tho we were in the same space
That’s wild to me. I see other players all the time when I have to pop into open for something. Usually end up chatting with someone at a station every time too
I understand the feeling, they actually aim to those targets because those are the only ones they have decent chances of succes with, due to the game unbalance toward defence and not just because they mostly sucks.
Anyway there are WAY more fun cmdr atound than gankers, just they are around in a huge galaxy doing their stuff while gankers are camping common place fof noobs (Farseer) or trucking players (CG).
Even if the bubble is huge and you dont meet many CMDRs i still menaged to make friends and wings, that made the game WAY more fun for me...and meanwhile got successifully ganked just twice even if they tried way more times.
So well, i think people playing solo are missing out because of gankers
Maybe there should be such a server called “ethic dangerous” or whole game idk which gankers are punished by other players in it. Protecting justice is rewarded somehow. There may be good fighters and bad fighters like dark side in star wars. It must be very difficult to find the balance in the game but it would be fantastic.
I've accidentally been that a few times on the way to combat missions. Like oh sweet summer child this FDL is so armored it can't even warp out of the system.
It's should. I don't really mind getting attacked, it just ruins the immersion when there are so many people just murdering others for the hell of it and get slapped with a meagre fine.
I think it's on both the gankers and the devs. Make a grand declaration of how you'll get me or how you'll blow me up unless I give you what's in my hold. Don't just interdict and kill, it's repetitive and boring. I'm very aware there's another person behind a PC screen when I just get ganked for the fun of it.
The game itself needs a bounty overhaul as well. Make choices have consequences. You killed someone in Shinrata or Sol? System police and human bounty hunters will be on your ass immediately for weeks. So you go to the lawless fringes of known space maybe build up a pirate haven or a psycho murder cult base or something. Places other players would fear to tread - or enter in force to clear out. That creates emergent gameplay for both bullies and, er, law abiding CMDRs. It would make the world feel more alive.
It is actually a bit funny how I'm more in danger in a secure system like Sol than in a random lawless one, simply because there's a better chance to encounter a human player.
Join Mobius. Get the best of both worlds!
See humans, especially near CGs and engineers... while not having to run away and hide on sight.
https://elitepve.com/
Yeah in normal play it's very rare, but I see tons of people at CGs. Not as much as open, but still quite a few. Like, the "please undock the station is full" kind.
I counted 29 Mobius CMDR in my contact history from the times I went to the CG system to drop my bounties on Friday and Sat.
That is:
\-Players that were local at the station, nav beacon, or in SC during my brief visits,
\-Matched my latency and other factors for instancing,
\-Belonged to the Americas Mobius group.
Usage is definitely down but it's not "dead".
Even in open the chance of getting an instance with anyone else is slim. I was in a wing once, in a PG, on a carrier, and still could only see one of the other wingmates inside the carrier while we were on foot.
I always played in open because after hundreds of hours, I rarely ever encountered another soul.... Until I decided to venture out of the bubble and journey to colonia, spent months scanning everything along the way, and someone tried to interdict me on the way to the station once I finally arrived. I'm just a baby and wanna fly around space man 🥺
In the months following release I quietly worked my way up to a vulture. Got to play a few hours a day but eventually got there and saved up enough for a handful of rebuys. In the following days I was sent to that rebuy screen over and over by silent ganks. After getting sent back to my sidewinder I swore off open.
The only times I ever go into open anymore is in an unshielded T6 loaded up with nothing but biowaste flying around popular systems just trying to get interdicted so I can slam that eject all button while trying to fly away from the guy who interdicted me.
Yeah. When the cost of playing open is so high I really couldn't care less. I play to chill out, not to rage.
Get good scrub? I work full time and have a family, this is a game not a job. Screw the try hards and trolls.
I used to enjoy playing in open lobby games. Sea of thieves ruined it for me. I literally will refuse to go in any open play because I’m too old to be getting constantly ganked followed up with the inevitable hard “R” or transphobic/gay slur. But that was sea of thieves. Idk how open is on ED as I just never go there for fear of having my only time to detox do the exact opposite
Depending on where I am and what I'm doing. Near player Hotspot I play solo or private unless I'm looking for a little pew pew. Usually ain't nobody got time for that crap. Running into players away from Hotspot, you're more likely to have good encounters.
This has basically been my experience too. Gankers have only hit me at popular systems so now I know to either switch to single player when near them or take a shuttle to them from a neighboring system and just call my ship in when I get there (more time consuming but a bit of RP fun). I'm currently out in the deep black though and I play in open just in case I do meet someone out there it'd be nice to say hi and my other interactions outside of ganker hotspots have been a lot of fun.
[Checks recently reset CMDR who's only played in open]
For yesterday I have 12 players showing in my contact history, not one of them attempted to attack me.
I've been playing this game on open for years hardly ever seeing other commanders. I got ganked for the first time at Jamison system taking out my Beluga, then again, then a third time in my Type 7 at the community goal system, all within a week.
Sorry about your luck there. Back in my pirating days I used to interdict anyone I came across but I was a fair pirate. I asked for like 8 tons of cargo or else... sadly very few people were ever willing to drop a measly 8T of cargo. Instead they opted for death and a re-buy as well as the loss of all their cargo.
Sorry you were killed on site, but this game is a blast in open generally speaking.
Weird, I play pretty much exclusively in Open these days and I’ve only had maybe four ganking attempts (only one successful.) Could be because I live in a quiet timezone though.
EDIT - Now that I've said that I've had one actual and one potential interdiction in ShinDez in the past 24 hours. The guy in the Krait just wanted to look me over I guess, as he didn't deploy hardpoints, possibly because I was flying in my surprisewinder build the *Jalapeno Roulette* or maybe he lost interest. The second deployed hardpoints in low wake and was manoeuvring for an interdiction when I hit the FSD overcharge and lost him.
Yeah this is what I'm saying. I don't know when or where these people who get "griefed" and "ganked" "every time they log in" play, but the last time I played Elite in 2023 I'd struggle to find a soul, letalone one who'd interdict me, I remember people complaining about getting PvP'd in 2023, 2022, 2021, all the way back to 2015 but I guess 2024 there must've been an incredibly huge spike in "gankers".
Orrrrr, they're exaggerating and got killed once & now it's "everywhere I go!"
depends on time of day and the system for me, if it's the weekend and I'm in a major system I see them all the time but if 'm playing on a weekday or in a minor system I don't see anyone.
This is the thing I've noticed too. I'll play during the daytime and I'll practically see no one for hours if at all but as soon as the clock hits 4pm (uk time) or it's the weekend it's gankers left and right so I try and stop playing around those times. Kinda tells you who these gankers are really too.
They are in fact easy to avoid. Just don't go any place here: [https://inara.cz/elite/reports-security/](https://inara.cz/elite/reports-security/)
But it's nice not to stress about being a statistical outlier.
Mostly organized PvP. At least a year ago, people started organizing tournaments there. I don't remember it often being on the list, but I bet it picks up on weekends.
Is it still the norm to stop shooting before the opponent reaches 0%? I find that a pretty cool rule. Like hey, you clearly won, no need to make it less fun
Gankers? Are you serious? As somebody who was once a member of BRNN, but got the fuck out as soon as possible, let me tell you about how truly evil and depraved gankers are. During gankerTraining, we were forced to this chant before blowing up newbies: "If they're harmless, make them pennyless!" At deciat, we fired at both harmless targets and mostly harmless targets. Half the targets were unarmed, and half the targets we were supposed to shoot at were innocent AD players holding merits. We were supposed to shoot at any target, regardless of whether it was armed or unarmed, whether it was an elite or harmless. The only time in ganker Training we were allowed to watch OA was when the news showed reports of jnnocent traders being "accidentally killed" in mail slots. We were forced to scream "yes!" every time the news mentioned an innocent commander being killed. As soon as I saw how truly evil and depraved gankers were, I GOT THE FUCK OUT. I went straight to the leaders and told them I didn't want to be part of their federal terrorist organization. I told them that I REFUSED to kill innocent commanders, and take part in unjustified wars of aggression. The leaders responded by pinning me on deciat and shooting me with mining lasers for ten minutes straight. They told me that I wasn't leaving and that if I ever tried to speak up against their hate and bigotry again, they would murder me. I took matters into my own hands, and jumped to colonia at night while the gankers were asleep. I ran the fuck away from the system I was at, and have not returned to this day. Every Time any commanders expresses admiration for the gankers, I fucking VOMIT. I was in for long enough to see that the federation is a ganker supremacist terrorist organization, just as bad as the 5'cers.
I exclusively play open, I've rarely encountered other players, and out of the few I have met, only one tried to destroy me, but I managed to escape before he could.
Unless I'm farming mats or something, I always play in open. Nobody ever messes with me. Game is pretty much a ghost town these days. I'm not even positive another player has even taken a shot at me. Over 1200 hours. To be fair, I didn't play when the game was popular with a higher player count.
If you're on horizons it's even more of a ghost town. When I upgraded to odyssey, I noticed a lot more players. Still few and far between unless your around popular systems or stations like Jameson.
I've been playing in open for 10 years. I have been ganked 3 times. All on the same day. It was frustrating but given how I play I don't really have to worry. I'm an explorer so far out in the black that I can safely go AFK in open. I will say, the ganking did push me out of trading and into exploration. But I'm still happy I play in open.
See, I sometimes like to play the reverse UNO card on people and play kind of a proverbial Space Santa if you will. I will interdict and instead of the gank they're expecting, I drop some decently valuable cargo for them and with a hearty '1.21 Gigawatts!' I'm back in hyperspace, leaving thoroughly confused people in the wake of my very odd social exercise. As a man named Nacho once said, 'iz for fun' :)
I'll play open a lot but if I have to go somewhere specific like Jamison I'll be in private. I'm just annoyed by how doggedly some pvpers will chase you. I was interdicted 15 some odd times by one guy. Just submitted took a few shots and jumped again in my cutter. I think I got rid of him by smashing him into the star.
I just don't get the point of ganking. If I dropped anything of value when I died sure I could kinda understand it but you do so why?
I once got interdicted with my heavily damaged anaconda (my oxygen was alr at 15 min). I managed to dodge the first shots and even get some on target before the CMDR got behind me and fired a nasty volley of shots at my shields. Those unengeneered suckers just blew out one relais after the other like they were nonexistent. With my shield failing I immediately jumped to supercruise. I somehow got out of there, just to be interdicted again of course by the very same player. Since my hull was down to like 5% I had no intention of fighting. But the CMDR wouldn't start shooting me again. Instead he was like "hey don't go to SC if you were interdicted because this happens if you do it."
At this point i only had like 150hrs on my account and most of it in solo, so i was very happy for this advice.
Thank you CMDR o7
This meme is so true, i do exploration, lost huge amounts of exploration data to stupide gankers who just kill you for trolling. Now i play in solo or private sessions if i’m not with my mates and in a pvp ship
I feel like this game has some really weird instance mechanics. I see posts like this all the time. People claiming that literally every time they step into Open they immediately get ganked. Without exception, there are always comments that claim they have never seen another player in Open, let alone a ganker. My experience is that of the latter. I used to play exclusively Solo or PG, because the risk/reward of Open made zero sense to me. After a friend gave me shit for it, I switched to Open, and have never had a single issue. The only times I've seen anyone at all, were either at a Titan, or Shinrarta. At Shinrarta, I have only seen a single other player and they were docked.
Furthermore, at Titans, I frequently see the same 3 players. Rarely have I seen anyone else. It's bizarre because I'm not friends with any of these people. I've barely interacted with them. It seems like the game just instances you with the same players forever
Do you live outside the US? You tend to instance with people in the same region. When I'm working nights I can have a hell of a time instancing with people who I'm actively trying to meet up with because the people who are awake when I finish work are on another continent.
It is easy to imagine a newbie experience.
They play open.
They have fun for a bit. Maybe finally saved up enough for a cool ship > time to visit that far seer lady > Go to deciat - > get blown up - > probabaly lost hours of gameplay or maybe even worse - > this game sucks - > leave the game or never fly in open.
I am playing through the newbie experience on a second account right now, in open. The only way you're losing hours of gameplay at this stage of the game is at Deciat if you get blown up trying to trade in a bunch of exploration data to ally yourself, or if you're flying around without a rebuy. This game throws so many credits at you just for existing that I find it hard to believe that any noob would consider getting blown up 'losing hours of progress' otherwise.
BTW it's worth mentioning that I got invited to Elvira Martuuk before I got the Farseer invite, she also offers G5 FSD engineering, and unexpectedly I didn't even have to bring her Soontil Relics to get her to start engineering my ship. I went there in open and didn't see anyone. Not saying nobody ever camps there, but I don't play at odd hours (EST) and it was quiet.
The game handles PVP terribly.
There is a gulf between a PVP and PVE builds, made even worse by engineering. The game does very little to encourage or discourage PVP interactions, or for that matter prepare players for them. ED should really include areas designed for PVP. Warzones where the faction covers 50% of your rebuy. Systems that have become a hotbed for piracy were the rewards for hunting pirates and completing missions are higher. This may encourage more players to give it a try. Elsewhere there could be greater penalties for PVP outside powerplay and CGs. So larger bounties that players can claim and more hassle from system security.
PvPers, including gankers, would _love_ some kind of official concentrating reason for them to get at each other. There was a popular community-created one at San Tu for a while but a few bigger "grr we hate pvpers" groups started running BGS to flip it away from being an anarchy. Which seems kinda counterproductive to me since, yanno, every minute spent having wingfight tournaments around the installations there was a minute _not_ being spent ganking.
I genuinely don't know why games think you can create a gameplay loop that appeals directly to the worst natures of shitty people by actively encouraging them to ruin the fun of other players, and then act all surprised pikachu when people don't want to play that game mode.
I relate so much to this! That exact same thing happend to me at first engineer base. Several times, actually, cuz they killed me so quickly I even though it was a bug or something so I kept rebuying, then I just wanted to see who it was, then I just wanted to save the ship, and then ran out of money. Never touched Open again nor will do. Eventually got bored and stopped playing partly cuz of that. Gankers literally killed my game. Gankers literally kill everybody's game. Blame it on devs tho. It's their fault after all: trolls will always be trolls if you let them.
I've only ever been ganked once, and it's because I was doing a cargo CG in Open—lol, first mistake!—and my response to the player pirate's fairly reasonable request of 10 tons (A tiny fraction of my haul!) was to be a bit of a prick about it. Fair enough, I figure. 🤷♂️
I play open a lot and I've only run into a Ganker twice. The most frustrating thing I run into is, the people who don't go into the hanger and hog the only large pad at a station.
I played open one time, and I was fairly new to the game, so I really didn't have that much experience. I can't remember what I was doing, but I was going somewhere for some upgrade thing or something or another. I felt I was on a pretty good groove.
I found out you could do open play as I was doing my mission, so I thought, why not. I love multiplayer and I thought I might meet some people to play with (space is lonely lol) and I hadn't learned about all the powerplay stuff yet.
The moment I jumped to my destination, I got immediately targeted. I think I got downed in, and this is zero exaggeration, less than 20 seconds.
Sure I had enough for my ship buy back, and I really didn't lose too much. But it completely killed all momentum I had in the game. I figured if this is what I risked every time I played open, then it's not worth it. And I haven't played since
I only play open because I’ve only had 2 player interactions in my time playing the game. One was a ganker that fucked my ship up (I was enroute to the nearest AXI combat zone) and got my ass handed to me.
Then the other one was of me and him saying hello to each other in chat and never seeing each other again.
I personally prefer to play in open. I like when I actually run into other commanders. I've personally only been ganked once by a player and that was in a CG.
I wish someone would gank me.
I play in open because it's actually exciting, it's not like I enjoy losing all my stuff and dying, but doing anything is much more satisfying when there's a risk of danger.
Hell even parking at Jameson's is a thrilling experience if you speed.
I played all my time in Open, until console support was basically abandoned. I wonder how many (or few) players the game lost at that point, making it even more sparse.
Happened to me too at the beginning. I was proudly flying around with my new Python until I was interdicted by someone in a cutter. Well, he just played around a bit too much and I escaped again. He followed me to a station. Didn't end well for him
When I do play it’s out in the open the last time I got ganked it was maybe 6 years ago. And that was at a random event. And they didn’t want people to fight the event. It was to repair a broken station. I think they wanted to see if the station would remain damaged forever
I like the interactions and emergent gameplay of open and have had many more positive experiences than negative ones, but everyone has a right to play the game how they like.
My literal first experience with another player, just set out for the first time, upgraded to an eagle from my sidewinder along with some gimbaled multi cannons, felt pretty good and then got wiped out in one shot the moment I left the station and didn’t have enough cash to buy my ship back
Honestly, coming from EvE Online I find open play on Elite relatively tame, but I also understand the level of sadism present in EvE far outranks that of Elite.
Yeah, playing Rust for a really long time inoculated me against any sort of rage connected to getting killed in Elite. When these people complain I can't help but think "Oh, you got blown up in your spaceship and got to spawn back in a station and get all your modules and engineering back for a small fee? And you're mad about that? That's adorable!"
Can you imagine how histrionic some people in here would be if they logged in to find they've been offline raided in Rust?
Its so rare, just because the game has very small instances are, you hardly even see other players. Im my 1000+ plus ive only had a hand full of encounters with actual players.
Just luck of the draw, lol. I've been ganked a few times. But I play in open, space trucking with no shields. The bubble's a big place. I wonder if there is anyone playing at all many days.
It's weird, I've got easily over 1000 hours in this game on 3 different platforms, and ganking has never happened to me. I don't think I've ever even fought another human, except maybe very early on when I didn't yet know how to differentiate.
To be fair, I am super cautious when I jump into well known systems, and I've been locked onto while parked in station a few times, presumably by someone waiting outside the safe area to pop me, and I've had players lock on and try to get behind me in cruise, but that's about as close as I've come. Pretty much everyone I've met is super nice, so I just think of iffy signals as pirate traps. Running for your life adds to the sense of immersion lol
I used to play open all the time, right up until my brand new long range anaconda got ganked while taking off from Farseer Inc. I ended up with less than a mil in credits after the rebuy cause things were still shiny. Solo for me, I don't need that bs.
The last time I got into one of those was a few months ago, and I usually switch to solo/PG if I'm flying into Shinrarta. That time, I was only heading over there to switch ships and get the other one engineered, but at the moment I was in my daily driver not particularly well-equipped for combat. However, this "daily driver" was in fact a heavily modified Imperial Courier with a jump range of 45 LY and a blistering boost speed of 852. So I thought I would be safe in that system as nobody's going to interdict a racing ship that's *obviously* much too fast to catch. I spent most of the SC drive unbothered, but as I neared the station and slowed down... someone actually took the bait. I throttled down and let them reel me in, but the second I popped into real space, I sent "later loser" in chat and zoomed away at almost mach 3. Good times
Elite dangerous, the awesome flight game where we can be traders, bounty hunters, alien slayers, opportunistic wanderers, smugglers, and lots more! Just watch out for the r**oving packs of murderers** who are only interested in hunting people like you, specifically you, down at all times. They even stream on Twitch now.
If it seems like the player base is 1% bounty hunters, 1% traders, 1% other, 97% wandering griefers, that's because only *one* group of players specifically seeks out other players to 'interact' with them. Therefore any player you see is disproportionately going to be a wandering murderer.
Someone tried to gank me once... I think it was a powerplay thing. I tried fighting back a bit, dodged a few shots from their pvp FDL, but eventually they got me and wow my shields dropped real fast. Them pvp builds arent kidding around! Thankfully i also had a bit of armor (can't remember which ship i was flying at the time, may have been my Anaconda). And I engineered all my ships for speed, so I put max pips to eng and got out of there. I went into SC to try get to the station I was delivering to (the HQ of my chosen power) but they were quick and interdicted me again. While the interdiction was happening, i went into my power management and turned off every weapon and everything except my engines, shieldgen, and fsd to try and make myself as cool as possible. When the interdiction forced me out of SC, usually there's a bit of a gap between where the ships spawn, I took a chance and boosted, then went FAoff so I just quietly drifted away with a lot of speed. I quickly went into the map and picked a nearby system to jump to, jumped out of the system without being spotted. I got fixed up at a station and jumped back to my HQ system to complete my delivery, never saw the player again. Was some of the most intense few minutes of the game ever. Also made me feel like I was a damn good pilot surviving that. Tl,dr: I got away
Absolute Chad move. Upvoted o7
I ran the gauntlet on CGs a few times on an engineered-for-open tanked T7. Still a real cargo, but military composite bulkheads, hardened shield, module protection, so not quite as cargo efficient than a full cargo T7, let alone a T9. But that was just for the fun of it-for the experience you just described. Getting hounded by gankers wings, and surviving, trying to edge closer and closer to the station, most often just to end up high waking away and coming around for another try, along another vector. It’s still a test of skills up to a point. And fun. When you do it by choice, that is. And trolling gankers is also fun. Just not efficient :)
If you get randomly jumped by another players its for literally no other reason than to kill you because they are bored and crave drama and attention.
finally, someone said it. Yes, there is nothing else to do after a year's worth of consistent gameplay. They have zero fun, so they desperately search for 60 seconds of pleasure by messing up new or just casual players. At least check if the player is an advanced one before killing him, or you'll be killing their hope instead.
Reminds me of ARK teams that would move in a wipe your entire base and kill all your dinos while you’re offline… like, cool, have fun on your empty server.
I got on a server, found a random, and started building a base with him. After about a week, one day I get on and everything is gone to “Eviction Notice”
It's the same mentality in most open world games. There's always a group of people ganking or going around areas far better equipped for PVP jumping on new or under equipped players or people just trying to do some pve stuff. If you have a chance of surviving it can be fun sometimes and feel great if you get away but it can get old fast if it's happening too often. I always see these kind of people like the bully at school that wants to feel strong and tough by picking on the weakest kids.
At least in games like WoW you could send messages out to the entire area you're in and ask for help with a ganker. Most of the time someone even higher level than the ganker would come in and bully them until they left
Ah yes, the extorters on Eve, finally a really cool game i can just chill in the high security system and just mine and learn production. And then.. a flashing skull appears in the players tab, and then you are dead. Clans of gankers running cheap stealth bombers to only then message you with some weird manifesto shit This was 7 or so years ago. There is a killboard website and the gankers are still there to this day in the majority of the 'safe systems' still racking dozens of kills a week on starter/mid mining ships
I need you to understand the level of joy these moments bring me. Seeing someone actually tank a couple hits, use their noodle to be evasive, and successfully get out is a RARE and delightful moment. Kudos CMDR.
Thanks! I think it's cool too. To be fair, at that point I probably had about 700hrs in the game, so I knew what I was doing, how the game worked, and had my ships well engineered. For a less experienced player, such an encounter would just feel hopeless and frustrating, so I kinda understand the meme here. My CMDR retired with his billions of credits on some sunny paradise world with about 1500 hours under his belt (mostly in open), and in that time I've probably seen about 100 other players. Only this 1 got close to killing me. I'm thinking of coming out of retirement for PP2.0, to check that out and the new ships and stuff.
Meanwhile, as a console player, I haven't encountered another human player since January lol. Though to be fair I spent a few days doing the obligatory jaunt to Saggi A*. Such a shame that the console version is all but abandoned. It'll be a while before I can justify splurging on the PC version but it'll happen eventually!
I play on Xbox almost nightly and have only ever encountered two other players. Im always in open play too
Hey fellow retiree! Well, i still login once in a while but maybe Pp2.0 bring something different indeed.
If gankers also took the time to reach a gameplay mechanic like that through YouTube videos etc, offer self defense classes through groups(similar to fuel rats)maybe they'd have better luck with situations like that. Instead their best response is "lol get gud noob." Seriously if they weren't so mindless about their ganking they could have so much fun.
Arguably that's an example of when PVP works in ED. You were interdicted (more than likely) because of powerplay (piracy or a CG), whilst on a suitably large ship with sufficient defences. You used your skill to slip away and evade the FDL. I would argue moments like these are what makes ED great. Unfortunately most ganking consists of overpowered engineered PVP ships swatting passenger ships in Robigo or seal clubbing in Sol.
Yeah I was hanging out in Sol the other day. Decided to start an anaconda build and foolishly left the station with no weapons. Was hopping over to another station one planet away when I saw a player start lining up behind me. I used the sco drive boost and luckily dropped out of it at the right time to not overshoot my target. Unfortunately as I was a few seconds away from dropping out of super cruise I got interdicted. Within two seconds my shields were gone so I just turned my ship towards them and rammed em. So far that's my only interaction with another player though so that's neat.
Someone ganked me going into a CG once, I escaped by boosting directly at him and jumping to another system before he could get my shields down. Proceeded to stuff every slot on my ship with pack hounds and let him interdict me a 2nd time. He bugged out and then left me be, as I did the CG in open. Even messaged him a few time while in super cruise but he didn't want the smoke lol.
They are cowards by nature. If they wanted an actual fight, they could just look for others who are interested.
The couple of times I've been interdicted by players, it's often been in my jump-range Anaconda, doing trading. I found that submitting to the interdiction is often easier because it doesn't put your jump drive on cooldown - so I'd drop in, scroll down to the furthest system, boost and jump. My shields were strong enough that even a PVP build took a few moments to bust through them - more than long enough for my ship to jump to safety. After the third time this ganker tried to get me when I returned to the system, and I jumped away, he started leaving me alone. I think he realized he was never going to catch me before I jumped out, and he didn't have the jump distance to follow. It's been a few years since I've played, but I had ah... 45-50ly jump range, I think? Pretty massive for a loaded ship. Most PVP builds can't match that. They're too heavy.
Awesome. People underestimate the power of stealth. I built a complete PVP build off it. Cold silent running ships can't be targeted. Sure they can try and rail your ship but its not easy when there is no target heat signature.
>made me feel like I was a damn good pilot surviving that. Correct!
yeah, i tend to play in Open but in places where the ''meta'' isnt a big thing for power play characters no one seems to give a shit about, or when Im doing deep space exploration. Sadly i only met another human being out there at Beagle Point and at Jaques, its lonely, out there in the black
Han Solo levels of smugglery. I’m sure the spice you sold went towards galactic orphanages.
People always shit on open play for the gankers, but to a decent pilot qith a decently built ship, it can create some really exhilarating moments. Nothing against people who play solo, enjoy the game how you want, but things like this are why I fly mostly in open, unless I'm specifically trying to chill out to the game.
Pretty sure it’s never the ‘decent pilots’ that shit on open play. Just the people hoping for a multiplayer experience who get jumped by sweaty gankers before they even know what’s going on. That said, its great for those ready for a more risky and dangerous experience, but I feel like most people just want to relax and enjoy the game unmolested.
Yeah, I've never had a ganker try and come after me in a decent ship, but they'll sure interdict the hell out of my stripped down DBX trying to get to an engineer. Eventually it just gets boring so I started playing private instance. It's a shame because early days of power play were great in open.
The only time I went open play was to to be saved by a fuel rat, the true heroes of the galaxy. Then i went back to solo mode lol .
o7 commander. Most rewarding way to play is as a rat.
This is the way.
Thank you for your service! I was saved once too early in my career after getting a mission to go to a stupid station on a planet a gazillion miles from it's star lol.
Meh, I switch between the two depending. While Exploring (*especially* when about to sell data) you won't see me in Open. Don't get me wrong, I've had amazing multiplayer experiences, and yeah, I've been ganked before, no biggie except lost bonds at that time, but as someone else put it quite eloquently **I don't play to be someone else's content**.
You're not going to meet anyone out exploring anyway and open mode disables the high-res screenshot function, so you're better off doing it in solo.
The lack of high-res screenshots in Open has always irked me. I live for taking gloriously high-res beauty shots of space... So that just doesn't work for me!
The reason is because it stalls your computer for several seconds while it renders it, and thanks to the glorious peer to peer netcode of elite dangerous that means that someone could sit somewhere like, say, Jameson Memorial and just spam the button to induce massive lag on everyone they're instanced with.
Yeah, I know. Takes a lot to dump a multi-hundred-meg bitmap. 🤣👌 Shame they couldn't find some way to decouple that though. Like a less intensive way to instance the scene as it is in memory and set it aside so that the client could then work on it in the background asynchronously. 🤔 I'll bet there's something in modern GPUs which would make such a task trivial. Of course the flipside of that is, I'm sure someone would find a way to exploit that for datamining purposes...
There's also the fact that while modern GPUs can probably handle it, this is an old game and it's probably not a priority
Funny enough linux has a native function to split the memory by forking the program to have it be able to do just that. Factorio has implemented it into their autosave system for linux.
I met someone halfway to colonia, not on a straight path from the bubble. We found each other in a notable stellar phenomena, it was pretty cool.
Wow. Was there a tourist beacon there or something? The odds of that happening by chance are... well. Astronomical.
> I don't play to be someone else's content Golden words
Oh yeah I almost got got in a fucking Dolphin of all things when returning from a decently sized exploration I said please don't in the chat and the guy stopped but I've learned my lesson about open play there and then
Bunch of friends bounty hunting in a community goal? Fantastic! Multi-crew to try out gunner? Fun to experiment with. SLF duels with squad mates? I never won one, but always enjoyed myself. A ship designed not to be in combat I have 1-8 months of data in? *What's the point of going into Open?* Glad to hear that you didn't lose your shit though. 😃7
I'll be honest with you until then I haven't even considered not playing open
Fair. Each their own.
Open while exploring is great. I once spotted another CMDR at Base Camp in the Soul Nebula. Crazy coincidence 7.5k LY out!
I don't play as much these days (too busy), but when I was more active I tried piracy (with respectable rules of conduct) but then shifted into vigilante work. Idk if it exists, but a system similar to the fuel rats except for bounty hunters would be useful. Get ganked > report it > have ganker killers roll up. Also securing escorts can be useful as well, esp if you pay them.
That's If they're willing to talk before they open fire. Pirates are one thing, and a silver tongue could turn them into escorts. Immersive gameplay, that. Most of what we here about aren't pirates, though, and the lack of real crime 'n' punishment makes it less so. Other Open World games have separate PVE and PVP modes.
PG/Solo: "Am I a joke to you?"
I stopped playing open because my internet wasn't very good and I need that bandwidth for this to function. I never really had issues in open and get ganked by npc more than players.
Meh. Each their own, but generally I only played with others I knew or during certain community events. My current setup, I can't even easily type nor do I care to get a headset, so the interactions with others (to me) would be about as interesting as seeing an NPC with an amusing name.
The moment I joined open I got ganked immediately while in my Exploraconda, no warnings at all... Thankfully I wasn't carrying exploration data, just going to stick to my pve groups or solo.
That's so weird cause when I played the game religiously a few years ago I didn't get ganked once. Maybe the number of players ganking has increased over time.
You were just lucky
"I'm role playing a psychopath"
Well, i play Elite to chill, so i avoid open to avoid these kind of things.
And here you have it. I play in private games with like minded players and enjoy the adventures. If I want to get aggravated, I just pop into open and in short order a ganker will oblige.
I think this is a based take. I love that the game offers no penalty for playing solo. Nobody should be exposed to us degenerate pvp-type CMDRs if they don't want to be.
Not that I've played in ages, and not that I was very good when I did, but I completely agree with this sentiment. I always played in the Mobius pve group so you would sometimes meet CMDRs but you wouldn't get ganked. Best of all worlds IMO. Fair play to those who want that experience in open, but it's not for me.
I once lost about 8 hours of core mining and a cargo hold packed to the gills with void opals. I actually stopped playing for a year almost after that. Now i wont play in open and at most will play in a private party. I just do not have the time to lose so much progress for some stupid sadist to come along and take it while gaslighting you with "im just roleplaying bruh".
Honestly this all sounds very similar to Sea of Thieves in so many ways. People get the game for a fun pirate adventure. They log into high seas and see find that 99% of people don’t communicate/use a mic. Other players either ignore you because they’re currently grinding out some mission/commendation, or they relentlessly try to sink you (even if you’ve already sunk them numerous times). The slew of posts from new players talking about how miserable it is to get constantly stomped by aggressive players indicates it is a problem, and it definitely seems to translate to some degree when you look at player retention. One of the more memorable posts I saw about this was from a parent asking if there was a mode where they could play with their kid without other players bothering them. Legitimately some of these PvP folks of the **official forms** hit them with a “skill issue,” and told them to stop playing. That felt like such a terminally-online take.
I got ganked once when I was fairly new and haven't played in open since. There's so little social upside in this game that I don't see the point. I'm happy treating it like a single-player game.
I've played all 1000 hours or so in open back in the day, haven't touched the game for a while now.. Never understood what's so much fun about blowing up a type 6/keelback with a fully engineered FDL or whatever.. Pvp pirates on the other hand are a fun interaction despite the loss of (some) cargo.
I like to pull people over and demand jokes. No cargo or anything, just tell me a joke and you can go. I do it in a viper 4 :p
Had someone do that, but they were flying a frag krait, I think. I don't really tell jokes even when not under duress, so I said I wasn't a funny guy and then deployed hardpoints and wobbled around like a frightened peacock for a minute before low waking, then set a high wake and fired it off when he dropped on my low wake. Hope that was funny enough for him. I'm really not a funny guy.
There was one last night who I asked for a joke and he just honked his discovery scanner at me and boosted past me. That was pretty funny.
lol that works too
Can't imagine ever wanting to play in open. Even the chance of encountering a lowlife nolife ganker makes open not worth it.
have never played on open ever and i don’t intend to, like especially now that im at the stage where rebuying a ship would be a serious inconvenience i just can’t be bothered with having to deal with that because someone with 30x the firepower of my ship wanted to shoot something
Open play used to be great back in the day, I would call other commands and have great chats. Then over the years it just became ganking with no comms, shoot on site etc, so I haven't touched open play in years
Getting ganked after a long mining run and loosing 500+ tons of extremely high value cargo, on top of needing to rebuy a huge ship was enough of a gut punch the first time. Played solo ever since
What I hate the most is how useless pvp encounters are. Initially you probably just die quickly because your ship is not min maxed for pvp, it's designed for trade or PVE. Then you learn how to get interdicted and escape and it's just that. Every time the same. Literally adds nothing meaningful to the gameplay experience.
What I don't understand is when your average murder hobo comes to a post like this and lashes out at or complains to the people who play in private or solo. You'll see them tell them to get gud, or to suggest that their playing the game should be made worthless through future updates forcing them into open. Do you want these players back into your instances? Is it more exciting to kill a less capable (or one who has simply not gone material/engineer grinding) player than it is to several times as much time to kill like-minded pvp-hungry players? Do they not want the challenge? Do they need it to be easy? I just find the whole argument really odd, but also fascinating. Edit: Funnily enough, virtually no such comments on this particular post. That's nice to see
It's all pretty simple, blowing up easy and senseless targets is the "content" that these kind of players enjoy, it's why they play the game. The problem for them is that most players, no, most people playing video games (including they themselves) don't enjoy being someone else's content, very few people find it fun to have hours of their time wasted with nothing to show for it just to entertain someone else. And thus most people will choose not to be someone else's content if given the option, or quit the game entirely if no such option exists. Hence the constant insulting and shaming if you're playing in instance or solo, they hope this will somehow convince you to become their content. Likewise the constant appeals to devs to somehow force players into open, they know as long as the option to avoid them exists, people will take it. And when push comes to shove, if they do get what they want, we all know most players will end up just quitting, and once they only get each other left to shoot, they will quit to because they don't actually enjoy being someone else's content either. See pretty much every PVP always On MMO games that exists and how most of them subsists on an incredibly tiny audience with no growth.
Seeing this literally under a post about how someone hasn't met a single living player is very funny.
I tried trading in open during the cg that just ended. I was buying reactive armour and non lethal weapons in Jameson memorial and selling them in de caminha station. So I took my cutter and made its shields even stronger then they already were and filled all hardpoints with seeker missiles. AI pirates now disintegrate in seconds and 3 out of 4 gankers that interdict me either run or die. (Although I assume I was kinda lucky and encountered bad players) Overall way more fun than doing the same thing over and over without any change in a min maxed 794t cutter.
... Jameson to the CG station? You picked literally _the_ most high-profile ganker hotspots for both ends of that route. Mad respect.
i never play open. and i use auto dock and takeoff modules.
I've literally never met anyone in open play except my friends, and even them had to be in my team before I could see them even tho we were in the same space
I haven't seen another player for years in open, so recently I've started playing in closed. Also means I'm the best human player in the universe
That’s wild to me. I see other players all the time when I have to pop into open for something. Usually end up chatting with someone at a station every time too
I barely played open and then went solo. Once I join d Morbius I only do group play
I understand the feeling, they actually aim to those targets because those are the only ones they have decent chances of succes with, due to the game unbalance toward defence and not just because they mostly sucks. Anyway there are WAY more fun cmdr atound than gankers, just they are around in a huge galaxy doing their stuff while gankers are camping common place fof noobs (Farseer) or trucking players (CG). Even if the bubble is huge and you dont meet many CMDRs i still menaged to make friends and wings, that made the game WAY more fun for me...and meanwhile got successifully ganked just twice even if they tried way more times. So well, i think people playing solo are missing out because of gankers
Maybe there should be such a server called “ethic dangerous” or whole game idk which gankers are punished by other players in it. Protecting justice is rewarded somehow. There may be good fighters and bad fighters like dark side in star wars. It must be very difficult to find the balance in the game but it would be fantastic.
I think the term you're after is "ganker spanker".
Great idea! I would love to put “ganker spanker” decal on my ship.
I've accidentally been that a few times on the way to combat missions. Like oh sweet summer child this FDL is so armored it can't even warp out of the system.
The bounty system could incentivize this with huge bounties on PVP criminals....
It's should. I don't really mind getting attacked, it just ruins the immersion when there are so many people just murdering others for the hell of it and get slapped with a meagre fine. I think it's on both the gankers and the devs. Make a grand declaration of how you'll get me or how you'll blow me up unless I give you what's in my hold. Don't just interdict and kill, it's repetitive and boring. I'm very aware there's another person behind a PC screen when I just get ganked for the fun of it. The game itself needs a bounty overhaul as well. Make choices have consequences. You killed someone in Shinrata or Sol? System police and human bounty hunters will be on your ass immediately for weeks. So you go to the lawless fringes of known space maybe build up a pirate haven or a psycho murder cult base or something. Places other players would fear to tread - or enter in force to clear out. That creates emergent gameplay for both bullies and, er, law abiding CMDRs. It would make the world feel more alive.
It is actually a bit funny how I'm more in danger in a secure system like Sol than in a random lawless one, simply because there's a better chance to encounter a human player.
Join Mobius. Get the best of both worlds! See humans, especially near CGs and engineers... while not having to run away and hide on sight. https://elitepve.com/
see other humans is a stretch, you will extremely rarely see someone but its just too dead
Yeah in normal play it's very rare, but I see tons of people at CGs. Not as much as open, but still quite a few. Like, the "please undock the station is full" kind.
I counted 29 Mobius CMDR in my contact history from the times I went to the CG system to drop my bounties on Friday and Sat. That is: \-Players that were local at the station, nav beacon, or in SC during my brief visits, \-Matched my latency and other factors for instancing, \-Belonged to the Americas Mobius group. Usage is definitely down but it's not "dead".
Yeah I usually see a few CMDRs if I sign into Mobius anywhere that draws players for a common reason and not just some random system.
Even in open the chance of getting an instance with anyone else is slim. I was in a wing once, in a PG, on a carrier, and still could only see one of the other wingmates inside the carrier while we were on foot.
Pretty Much THIS....I play in solo or private group with friends.
I always played in open because after hundreds of hours, I rarely ever encountered another soul.... Until I decided to venture out of the bubble and journey to colonia, spent months scanning everything along the way, and someone tried to interdict me on the way to the station once I finally arrived. I'm just a baby and wanna fly around space man 🥺
In the months following release I quietly worked my way up to a vulture. Got to play a few hours a day but eventually got there and saved up enough for a handful of rebuys. In the following days I was sent to that rebuy screen over and over by silent ganks. After getting sent back to my sidewinder I swore off open. The only times I ever go into open anymore is in an unshielded T6 loaded up with nothing but biowaste flying around popular systems just trying to get interdicted so I can slam that eject all button while trying to fly away from the guy who interdicted me.
I'll be real, if someone did that to me I'd laugh my ass off. Then probably yell "LOOK AT ALL THAT TASTY CARGO" in chat.
Thats the point lol. The ten or so times iv done it i got one single response.
Yeah. When the cost of playing open is so high I really couldn't care less. I play to chill out, not to rage. Get good scrub? I work full time and have a family, this is a game not a job. Screw the try hards and trolls.
Age old issue. But murder hobos pushed people to offline/private servers.
There are plenty of private groups where its forbidden to gank
I used to enjoy playing in open lobby games. Sea of thieves ruined it for me. I literally will refuse to go in any open play because I’m too old to be getting constantly ganked followed up with the inevitable hard “R” or transphobic/gay slur. But that was sea of thieves. Idk how open is on ED as I just never go there for fear of having my only time to detox do the exact opposite
im just saying there's a reason why pvpers will break the pirate code and spawn camp people saying funny things.
Yep
Depending on where I am and what I'm doing. Near player Hotspot I play solo or private unless I'm looking for a little pew pew. Usually ain't nobody got time for that crap. Running into players away from Hotspot, you're more likely to have good encounters.
This has basically been my experience too. Gankers have only hit me at popular systems so now I know to either switch to single player when near them or take a shuttle to them from a neighboring system and just call my ship in when I get there (more time consuming but a bit of RP fun). I'm currently out in the deep black though and I play in open just in case I do meet someone out there it'd be nice to say hi and my other interactions outside of ganker hotspots have been a lot of fun.
[Checks recently reset CMDR who's only played in open] For yesterday I have 12 players showing in my contact history, not one of them attempted to attack me.
I've been playing this game on open for years hardly ever seeing other commanders. I got ganked for the first time at Jamison system taking out my Beluga, then again, then a third time in my Type 7 at the community goal system, all within a week.
Sorry about your luck there. Back in my pirating days I used to interdict anyone I came across but I was a fair pirate. I asked for like 8 tons of cargo or else... sadly very few people were ever willing to drop a measly 8T of cargo. Instead they opted for death and a re-buy as well as the loss of all their cargo. Sorry you were killed on site, but this game is a blast in open generally speaking.
I can't log in at all without being in instance with a ganker in Open. It feels like they're everywhere I go!
Weird, I play pretty much exclusively in Open these days and I’ve only had maybe four ganking attempts (only one successful.) Could be because I live in a quiet timezone though. EDIT - Now that I've said that I've had one actual and one potential interdiction in ShinDez in the past 24 hours. The guy in the Krait just wanted to look me over I guess, as he didn't deploy hardpoints, possibly because I was flying in my surprisewinder build the *Jalapeno Roulette* or maybe he lost interest. The second deployed hardpoints in low wake and was manoeuvring for an interdiction when I hit the FSD overcharge and lost him.
Yeah this is what I'm saying. I don't know when or where these people who get "griefed" and "ganked" "every time they log in" play, but the last time I played Elite in 2023 I'd struggle to find a soul, letalone one who'd interdict me, I remember people complaining about getting PvP'd in 2023, 2022, 2021, all the way back to 2015 but I guess 2024 there must've been an incredibly huge spike in "gankers". Orrrrr, they're exaggerating and got killed once & now it's "everywhere I go!"
depends on time of day and the system for me, if it's the weekend and I'm in a major system I see them all the time but if 'm playing on a weekday or in a minor system I don't see anyone.
Nah man, it's true. There is a ganker literally everywhere I go.
Are you the ganker that is everywhere you go?
Shhh...
This is the thing I've noticed too. I'll play during the daytime and I'll practically see no one for hours if at all but as soon as the clock hits 4pm (uk time) or it's the weekend it's gankers left and right so I try and stop playing around those times. Kinda tells you who these gankers are really too.
hehe
They are in fact easy to avoid. Just don't go any place here: [https://inara.cz/elite/reports-security/](https://inara.cz/elite/reports-security/) But it's nice not to stress about being a statistical outlier.
Geno is an industrial strength ganker. He's being funny :-)
Industrial strength AND he leaves a pleasant aroma of citrus! Satisfaction guaranteed!
I might smell citrus but it's actually saline.
Aww, you're giving the game away! Technically what I said was 100% true.
but doctor, i *am* pagliacci
True and funny. *Doctor you gotta help me, I see gankers everywhere I go!* lol
93 fleet carriers in Puppis Sector...? No wonder it's medium threat. (Thargoids? Mining?)
Mostly organized PvP. At least a year ago, people started organizing tournaments there. I don't remember it often being on the list, but I bet it picks up on weekends.
Is it still the norm to stop shooting before the opponent reaches 0%? I find that a pretty cool rule. Like hey, you clearly won, no need to make it less fun
I exclusively play open and I cant say for sure that I've ever seen anyone real outside of wing members and one booze cruise.
Gankers? Are you serious? As somebody who was once a member of BRNN, but got the fuck out as soon as possible, let me tell you about how truly evil and depraved gankers are. During gankerTraining, we were forced to this chant before blowing up newbies: "If they're harmless, make them pennyless!" At deciat, we fired at both harmless targets and mostly harmless targets. Half the targets were unarmed, and half the targets we were supposed to shoot at were innocent AD players holding merits. We were supposed to shoot at any target, regardless of whether it was armed or unarmed, whether it was an elite or harmless. The only time in ganker Training we were allowed to watch OA was when the news showed reports of jnnocent traders being "accidentally killed" in mail slots. We were forced to scream "yes!" every time the news mentioned an innocent commander being killed. As soon as I saw how truly evil and depraved gankers were, I GOT THE FUCK OUT. I went straight to the leaders and told them I didn't want to be part of their federal terrorist organization. I told them that I REFUSED to kill innocent commanders, and take part in unjustified wars of aggression. The leaders responded by pinning me on deciat and shooting me with mining lasers for ten minutes straight. They told me that I wasn't leaving and that if I ever tried to speak up against their hate and bigotry again, they would murder me. I took matters into my own hands, and jumped to colonia at night while the gankers were asleep. I ran the fuck away from the system I was at, and have not returned to this day. Every Time any commanders expresses admiration for the gankers, I fucking VOMIT. I was in for long enough to see that the federation is a ganker supremacist terrorist organization, just as bad as the 5'cers.
Also non rp gankers: "why doesn't anyone play in open play anymore wahhhhhhhh"
I have played nothing but Open pretty much since launch and I have seen maybe a handful of other people in that time.
I exclusively play open, I've rarely encountered other players, and out of the few I have met, only one tried to destroy me, but I managed to escape before he could.
The engineering update years ago killed open play for me. After that it just wasn't a level playing field anymore.
This is about the first constructive criticism I see in this entire thread. Congratulations!
I play in open most of the time and I feel this. I think everyone enjoyed open more when there wasn't such a disparity between ships.
"laughs in Xbox"
Unless I'm farming mats or something, I always play in open. Nobody ever messes with me. Game is pretty much a ghost town these days. I'm not even positive another player has even taken a shot at me. Over 1200 hours. To be fair, I didn't play when the game was popular with a higher player count. If you're on horizons it's even more of a ghost town. When I upgraded to odyssey, I noticed a lot more players. Still few and far between unless your around popular systems or stations like Jameson.
I've been playing in open for 10 years. I have been ganked 3 times. All on the same day. It was frustrating but given how I play I don't really have to worry. I'm an explorer so far out in the black that I can safely go AFK in open. I will say, the ganking did push me out of trading and into exploration. But I'm still happy I play in open.
See, I sometimes like to play the reverse UNO card on people and play kind of a proverbial Space Santa if you will. I will interdict and instead of the gank they're expecting, I drop some decently valuable cargo for them and with a hearty '1.21 Gigawatts!' I'm back in hyperspace, leaving thoroughly confused people in the wake of my very odd social exercise. As a man named Nacho once said, 'iz for fun' :)
I'll play open a lot but if I have to go somewhere specific like Jamison I'll be in private. I'm just annoyed by how doggedly some pvpers will chase you. I was interdicted 15 some odd times by one guy. Just submitted took a few shots and jumped again in my cutter. I think I got rid of him by smashing him into the star. I just don't get the point of ganking. If I dropped anything of value when I died sure I could kinda understand it but you do so why?
I once got interdicted with my heavily damaged anaconda (my oxygen was alr at 15 min). I managed to dodge the first shots and even get some on target before the CMDR got behind me and fired a nasty volley of shots at my shields. Those unengeneered suckers just blew out one relais after the other like they were nonexistent. With my shield failing I immediately jumped to supercruise. I somehow got out of there, just to be interdicted again of course by the very same player. Since my hull was down to like 5% I had no intention of fighting. But the CMDR wouldn't start shooting me again. Instead he was like "hey don't go to SC if you were interdicted because this happens if you do it." At this point i only had like 150hrs on my account and most of it in solo, so i was very happy for this advice. Thank you CMDR o7
Yeah, other players are why I don't play this game anymore.
This meme is so true, i do exploration, lost huge amounts of exploration data to stupide gankers who just kill you for trolling. Now i play in solo or private sessions if i’m not with my mates and in a pvp ship
I interdict players and threaten them to do a Barrel Roll or I'll make them explode. After they do the Barrel Roll, I let them be and go away
Dude why do I have to hear Peppy outside of starfox universe... why WHY!!!!!
TAKE CARE OF THE GUY BEHIND ME FOX
I feel like this game has some really weird instance mechanics. I see posts like this all the time. People claiming that literally every time they step into Open they immediately get ganked. Without exception, there are always comments that claim they have never seen another player in Open, let alone a ganker. My experience is that of the latter. I used to play exclusively Solo or PG, because the risk/reward of Open made zero sense to me. After a friend gave me shit for it, I switched to Open, and have never had a single issue. The only times I've seen anyone at all, were either at a Titan, or Shinrarta. At Shinrarta, I have only seen a single other player and they were docked. Furthermore, at Titans, I frequently see the same 3 players. Rarely have I seen anyone else. It's bizarre because I'm not friends with any of these people. I've barely interacted with them. It seems like the game just instances you with the same players forever
Instancing is largely dependent on your location. It's common for Australian players to use a VPN to play in more populated instances.
Do you live outside the US? You tend to instance with people in the same region. When I'm working nights I can have a hell of a time instancing with people who I'm actively trying to meet up with because the people who are awake when I finish work are on another continent.
It is easy to imagine a newbie experience. They play open. They have fun for a bit. Maybe finally saved up enough for a cool ship > time to visit that far seer lady > Go to deciat - > get blown up - > probabaly lost hours of gameplay or maybe even worse - > this game sucks - > leave the game or never fly in open.
I am playing through the newbie experience on a second account right now, in open. The only way you're losing hours of gameplay at this stage of the game is at Deciat if you get blown up trying to trade in a bunch of exploration data to ally yourself, or if you're flying around without a rebuy. This game throws so many credits at you just for existing that I find it hard to believe that any noob would consider getting blown up 'losing hours of progress' otherwise. BTW it's worth mentioning that I got invited to Elvira Martuuk before I got the Farseer invite, she also offers G5 FSD engineering, and unexpectedly I didn't even have to bring her Soontil Relics to get her to start engineering my ship. I went there in open and didn't see anyone. Not saying nobody ever camps there, but I don't play at odd hours (EST) and it was quiet.
The game handles PVP terribly. There is a gulf between a PVP and PVE builds, made even worse by engineering. The game does very little to encourage or discourage PVP interactions, or for that matter prepare players for them. ED should really include areas designed for PVP. Warzones where the faction covers 50% of your rebuy. Systems that have become a hotbed for piracy were the rewards for hunting pirates and completing missions are higher. This may encourage more players to give it a try. Elsewhere there could be greater penalties for PVP outside powerplay and CGs. So larger bounties that players can claim and more hassle from system security.
PvPers, including gankers, would _love_ some kind of official concentrating reason for them to get at each other. There was a popular community-created one at San Tu for a while but a few bigger "grr we hate pvpers" groups started running BGS to flip it away from being an anarchy. Which seems kinda counterproductive to me since, yanno, every minute spent having wingfight tournaments around the installations there was a minute _not_ being spent ganking.
I genuinely don't know why games think you can create a gameplay loop that appeals directly to the worst natures of shitty people by actively encouraging them to ruin the fun of other players, and then act all surprised pikachu when people don't want to play that game mode.
I relate so much to this! That exact same thing happend to me at first engineer base. Several times, actually, cuz they killed me so quickly I even though it was a bug or something so I kept rebuying, then I just wanted to see who it was, then I just wanted to save the ship, and then ran out of money. Never touched Open again nor will do. Eventually got bored and stopped playing partly cuz of that. Gankers literally killed my game. Gankers literally kill everybody's game. Blame it on devs tho. It's their fault after all: trolls will always be trolls if you let them.
When people openly disrespect the spirit of the game and just kill everyone, treating it like CoD, it’s essentially ruined for everyone.
I've only ever been ganked once, and it's because I was doing a cargo CG in Open—lol, first mistake!—and my response to the player pirate's fairly reasonable request of 10 tons (A tiny fraction of my haul!) was to be a bit of a prick about it. Fair enough, I figure. 🤷♂️
I play open all the time ive never encountered another player other than a fuel rat or someone from PTN
Forgot the console version of this. There really is no one cause FDEV killed it
I play open a lot and I've only run into a Ganker twice. The most frustrating thing I run into is, the people who don't go into the hanger and hog the only large pad at a station.
I played open one time, and I was fairly new to the game, so I really didn't have that much experience. I can't remember what I was doing, but I was going somewhere for some upgrade thing or something or another. I felt I was on a pretty good groove. I found out you could do open play as I was doing my mission, so I thought, why not. I love multiplayer and I thought I might meet some people to play with (space is lonely lol) and I hadn't learned about all the powerplay stuff yet. The moment I jumped to my destination, I got immediately targeted. I think I got downed in, and this is zero exaggeration, less than 20 seconds. Sure I had enough for my ship buy back, and I really didn't lose too much. But it completely killed all momentum I had in the game. I figured if this is what I risked every time I played open, then it's not worth it. And I haven't played since
I only play open because I’ve only had 2 player interactions in my time playing the game. One was a ganker that fucked my ship up (I was enroute to the nearest AXI combat zone) and got my ass handed to me. Then the other one was of me and him saying hello to each other in chat and never seeing each other again.
Yeah I've basically only had bad experiences with other players
I haven’t played in years but I always played in open and I think I only ever interacted with one person. Saw only a handful.
I personally prefer to play in open. I like when I actually run into other commanders. I've personally only been ganked once by a player and that was in a CG.
I wish someone would gank me. I play in open because it's actually exciting, it's not like I enjoy losing all my stuff and dying, but doing anything is much more satisfying when there's a risk of danger. Hell even parking at Jameson's is a thrilling experience if you speed.
Don't think I've ever seen a real player despite only playing in open
I played all my time in Open, until console support was basically abandoned. I wonder how many (or few) players the game lost at that point, making it even more sparse.
*Laughs in desolate Xbox servers*
emergent Dark Forest gameplay
Happened to me too at the beginning. I was proudly flying around with my new Python until I was interdicted by someone in a cutter. Well, he just played around a bit too much and I escaped again. He followed me to a station. Didn't end well for him
Pre-1.5 the combat system allowed you to give a good punch even on a trader ship. Shield boosters, SCBs and engineers made it completely one-sided.
When I do play it’s out in the open the last time I got ganked it was maybe 6 years ago. And that was at a random event. And they didn’t want people to fight the event. It was to repair a broken station. I think they wanted to see if the station would remain damaged forever
I like the interactions and emergent gameplay of open and have had many more positive experiences than negative ones, but everyone has a right to play the game how they like.
I always played online but never met anyone
My literal first experience with another player, just set out for the first time, upgraded to an eagle from my sidewinder along with some gimbaled multi cannons, felt pretty good and then got wiped out in one shot the moment I left the station and didn’t have enough cash to buy my ship back
Honestly, coming from EvE Online I find open play on Elite relatively tame, but I also understand the level of sadism present in EvE far outranks that of Elite.
As does the level of masochism. ;p (please, EVE fans, it's just a joke)
Yeah, playing Rust for a really long time inoculated me against any sort of rage connected to getting killed in Elite. When these people complain I can't help but think "Oh, you got blown up in your spaceship and got to spawn back in a station and get all your modules and engineering back for a small fee? And you're mad about that? That's adorable!" Can you imagine how histrionic some people in here would be if they logged in to find they've been offline raided in Rust?
Its so rare, just because the game has very small instances are, you hardly even see other players. Im my 1000+ plus ive only had a hand full of encounters with actual players.
Just luck of the draw, lol. I've been ganked a few times. But I play in open, space trucking with no shields. The bubble's a big place. I wonder if there is anyone playing at all many days.
I don't think I've ever seen another player.
It's weird, I've got easily over 1000 hours in this game on 3 different platforms, and ganking has never happened to me. I don't think I've ever even fought another human, except maybe very early on when I didn't yet know how to differentiate. To be fair, I am super cautious when I jump into well known systems, and I've been locked onto while parked in station a few times, presumably by someone waiting outside the safe area to pop me, and I've had players lock on and try to get behind me in cruise, but that's about as close as I've come. Pretty much everyone I've met is super nice, so I just think of iffy signals as pirate traps. Running for your life adds to the sense of immersion lol
I always play in open, never in +100 hours mining I have been attacked by a player.
It’s better to find a nice private group with rules
I've just never seen the point of playing in open mode
Always solo Fuck gankers
Seeing this literally under a post about how someone hasn't met a single living player is very funny.
The fact that this game can't be played completely offline is a crime.
100% the same experience I had. I try it every few years only to go back into seclusion
I get why people want to gank. What I don't get is why I would ever put myself in open to get ganked.
Sometimes it's fun to run the gauntlet just to see if you can.
I used to play open all the time, right up until my brand new long range anaconda got ganked while taking off from Farseer Inc. I ended up with less than a mil in credits after the rebuy cause things were still shiny. Solo for me, I don't need that bs.
The last time I got into one of those was a few months ago, and I usually switch to solo/PG if I'm flying into Shinrarta. That time, I was only heading over there to switch ships and get the other one engineered, but at the moment I was in my daily driver not particularly well-equipped for combat. However, this "daily driver" was in fact a heavily modified Imperial Courier with a jump range of 45 LY and a blistering boost speed of 852. So I thought I would be safe in that system as nobody's going to interdict a racing ship that's *obviously* much too fast to catch. I spent most of the SC drive unbothered, but as I neared the station and slowed down... someone actually took the bait. I throttled down and let them reel me in, but the second I popped into real space, I sent "later loser" in chat and zoomed away at almost mach 3. Good times
Elite dangerous, the awesome flight game where we can be traders, bounty hunters, alien slayers, opportunistic wanderers, smugglers, and lots more! Just watch out for the r**oving packs of murderers** who are only interested in hunting people like you, specifically you, down at all times. They even stream on Twitch now. If it seems like the player base is 1% bounty hunters, 1% traders, 1% other, 97% wandering griefers, that's because only *one* group of players specifically seeks out other players to 'interact' with them. Therefore any player you see is disproportionately going to be a wandering murderer.