After watching the video I think @Simdor makes a good point, the dev was struggling to explain. I am hoping he was only trying to find an example of why piracy is good for the game and what can happen, but not necessarily what will happen. I agree, having a system where every X number of minutes without combat increases the chances the system will entertain you by having someone come to attack you, would not be a good game mechanic.
I do like your ideas on stopping or at least minimizing griefing, but I don’t fully agree with:
As you pointed out in the discussion on perma-death there is a minimal amount of content, faction doesn’t matter as it seems to be reset every time they patch, so there is no real penalty to being a douchebag. I’m sure some will continue to be jerks, but I believe some will change their play style once the penalties are real.
Call it a personal bias, but IMHO if they’re douchebagging now, they’re a douchebag and when they get bored in live, they’ll do it there. I would never do any of it, no matter how bored I am, it’s simply not in my nature.
Again, I’m not talking building a ban list or anything disciplinary, simply flag the accounts as PDB (potential douche bag) so that, when they do it in live, you’ve already started the list on them, saves time. Maybe have a counter, every time they’re a douchebag, starting now, increment it. Game goes live, someone calls CS, rep looks at the account and sees a PDB counter of 235,976 and goes “Uhh, yeah.”
Everytime Trufin opens his mouth, I have less and less respect for him. “People are inventive in creating chaos, heh heh, there’s nothing we can do about it, heh heh, if it happens to you 5 or more times you’ll have to open a ticket, heh heh.” sigh
“We’re going to aim for that 99% save play…in the starting area, and make it very unattractive for PvP players to go…to the starting area.” PvP players will get pulled to richer, more interesting areas, where there are things to do, but if you don’t like PvP you don’t get to go to the interesting, richer areas, you have to stay in the starting area and kill rats…heh heh.
But, of course there is going to be more PvP where the known areas of valuable resources are located.
They have also said that finding an unknown pocket of such resources is going to be THE most valuable commodity in the game. Not the resource itself, but the information about where to get it. Because if you don’t share that information then you have just found that pocket of uninterruptible space that you are looking for.
But my new general policy is to only concern myself with features in active development. Everything else is too far away and likely to change.
Just an example of what I mean:
I used to own an Endeavor. If I had purchased that ship at concept and today expected the game to be exactly what it was described to be back at that time, well, I would either be very excited or very angry.
I look at what is on the slate for the next release and pretty much ignore everything else.
Someone had linked pics of the Endeavor concept art, old stuff, looked completely different, so your comment had merit. I don’t pay close attention to stuff, super busy with life, so certainly could have missed “We’ve decided to make the Endeavor the flag in a galaxy-wide capture the flag map as we turn Star Citizen into a space battleground, as that is what the market wants.”
@macallen, I understand what you are saying and what he is saying. What was said was hardly substantive or enlightening and was just a recognition that ‘there are people who are generally d*cks and what can you do?’. I agree that he didn’t come forward with any substantive method for dealing with it and kind of just shrugged. I hope CIG gets a little more creative in their approach for dealing with the issue than waiving the white flag and shouting ‘we surrender’.
Since I have started following the game, I always had the impression that CIG wanted it to be a combat game. No matter what. Hands down.
It doesn’t matter what mechanic they are talking about, they always talk about your not going to be able to do X without risk, period. The question that comes up is how often your chance of getting hung up will be and thats still to early to tell.
Over the past year or so, they have repeatedly mentioned in videos that anytime you take a long QD trip your more than likely going to be yanked out. I remember a question came up in one of the videos that someone asked, does that mean we can’t get up and walk around your ship during QD travel because we can be attacked at anytime, and the Dev smirked and just said thats a choice you make.
Again, we won’t know how this will really pan out for quite some time. Its just like anytime salvage or mining comes up, the Devs almost always say your going to want escorts or help when you go out. Whatever happens in the long run, I just hope the game will still be enjoyable for the single players (not forcing people to be apart of large guilds to have someone on at all times to accompany you in when your go out) and we will be able to enjoy are large ships without having to worry about how fast we can get back to the bridge.
Make no mistake, no matter what you plan on doing in the game, it is a combat game. They even redesign ship layouts to make them better PVP layouts as apposed to making them better for use.
With that said, how about the people camping CryAstro demanding 10K or they blow up your ship when you try and fix/fuel. Arg.
I love the guild that has taken over CryAstro. I have faced them many times just today and died most of the time but once I joined a quantum fleet, we took it back and held it. Seemed like a big quest reward when everyone is cheering in chat. Granted CryAstro has little to no use now since you can just as easily claim your ship and get a brand new version of it and it wasn’t a huge mid-point jump except to Cellin from Port Olisar but the community content it created was what I mostly like about it.
The same thing happened with Security Post Khareah except there was no exstortion, just pure pvp.
What’s amusing about it being a combat game is the various polls that have indicated > 80% of the population want it to be a non-combat game, some rating it 5th out of 5 preferences. CR clearly didn’t like that poll and I expect it will still be a lot more combat than most people want, but it’s his game, he can do what he wants with it. If it distills down to 300k like Eve, then c’est le vie.
TO be clear about this, there is a difference between wanting a non-combat game and wanting combat to be a lower priority than other features.
I seriously doubt that 80% of the community wants combat removed from the game.
Also I put very little stock in polls.
But what I think you were implying is that most players are not interested in combat as their primary drive for playing Star Citizen. And I would agree.
However, I think a large part of that group of players is also fearful of SC becoming a PvP terrorist playground.
In non-combat areas of gameplay I can put forth the amount of resources I want to risk. For instance I can put a specific amount of time, money, influence, etc toward mining. Even with PvE combat, the risk is limited by the player to some extent.
But in PvP combat, the risk is determined more by the opponent. They can shut you down, let you go, blow your engine, destroy your ship, float you in space or capture you as a hostage. And none of that is determined by you before you head out to do combat.
That is both the thrill of PvP for some, and the dread of others.
But I do not think that combat is something that players want to avoid entirely. Even you, Mac, have said you plan to engage in combat on large vessels with other players as a shield operator or scanner tech or whatever. Combat can be fun, it is the loss of control to PvP that ruins it for many players.
What I would hate to see is all combat be lumped into the same bucket as PvP combat. Or really any non-consensual combat. Going to a battle in a ship with your combat crew buddies is one thing, being dragged into combat while exploring is another. Some risk while exploring is necessary to make it a space game. But in the past they have made it sound like it will be far more than anyone is comfortable with.
