What do you think about this?
- Thread starter Darth_Razor
- Start date
Noobifier missed point.
Buying a second package on a starter account would work but each ship still only has so many beds and once they are occupied then other players/NPC will not be able to use said bed. It was also said that NPC's that do not have a bed when the player logs out will attempt to fly the ship to the nearest station before logging the ship out. Somethings that still need to be flushed out was how long would a non owner player occupied ship bed last for or would it be possible to transfer a player log out beacon to a station when docked.
I do like the offline travel possibilities.
Buying a second package on a starter account would work but each ship still only has so many beds and once they are occupied then other players/NPC will not be able to use said bed. It was also said that NPC's that do not have a bed when the player logs out will attempt to fly the ship to the nearest station before logging the ship out. Somethings that still need to be flushed out was how long would a non owner player occupied ship bed last for or would it be possible to transfer a player log out beacon to a station when docked.
I do like the offline travel possibilities.
Offline travel would be the one of the better options. I know it's rare but sometimes we have to do the responsible thing and work, family etc. Having an app that would allow you to book your travel offline and setup a meet time would be handy. Set a 7pm rendezvous time for an action, fire up the app and book a character (maybe even small ship move) . Once you get home and are ready, everyone can log in and start.
Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
CIG is doing the right things and now allowing people to just teleport into friend's ships. It would make for a lot of exploits. Realism is the dream, and CR is upholding that dream. Sorry to those who are impatient.... you cant have it now now now. Plan accordingly to play with friends/etc.
Spectrum is still missing some basic functionality, so i'd say it's still a looooong way off.
supitza
Vault Dweller
I'm against Agent Smithing because I think it opens up a lot of potential exploits and goes against immersion and realism.
I'm thinking the root of the problem is the huge travel times between location in the 'verse. Comparing it to WoW, where the map is also huge and takes a lot to travel from one place to another, Blizzard solved the issue by incorporating ways of fast travel: the hearthstone and the flight waypoints and the teleporters.
You can't have both realism and convenience at the same time. There has to be a balance between the realism that CR pushes for and the ease of gameplay.
I'm thinking the root of the problem is the huge travel times between location in the 'verse. Comparing it to WoW, where the map is also huge and takes a lot to travel from one place to another, Blizzard solved the issue by incorporating ways of fast travel: the hearthstone and the flight waypoints and the teleporters.
You can't have both realism and convenience at the same time. There has to be a balance between the realism that CR pushes for and the ease of gameplay.
Smithing would only really be able to be done if you make it a 2-player mode. Basically, whoever is Smithing for you is playing in your game cooperatively and not advancing their own game in any way. Yeah, you might then wire them their share of the credits made via the intergalactic bank, but they are still on the other side of the universe and can't just pick up all that Unobtainium Ore they helped you to mine etc...
They are controlling a character already in your game, they are not a character in your game unless you both meet somewhere. You get their skills and expertise, you don't get them.
You may as well have a robot they plug a VR system in to control from the other side of the 'verse. You'd need to buy the robot, they'd need to buy the VR system and you'd both need to be in a communications area, and if one of those comms towers goes down you've lost your link and thats a lotta comms towers to span the entire 'Verse - and there is still the issue of why we need Heralds to move data, what if you get hacked while you are Smithing because of your high-data comm link and when you finish playing with your buddy you find your ship is parked in a Pirate Space Station and you are at knife-point...
I remember when Halo came out my friend would come round my house and we'd play 2 player spit-screen for hours. Then he'd go home and play single player for the same amount of time just to get to where we'd got to in co-op mode...
They are controlling a character already in your game, they are not a character in your game unless you both meet somewhere. You get their skills and expertise, you don't get them.
You may as well have a robot they plug a VR system in to control from the other side of the 'verse. You'd need to buy the robot, they'd need to buy the VR system and you'd both need to be in a communications area, and if one of those comms towers goes down you've lost your link and thats a lotta comms towers to span the entire 'Verse - and there is still the issue of why we need Heralds to move data, what if you get hacked while you are Smithing because of your high-data comm link and when you finish playing with your buddy you find your ship is parked in a Pirate Space Station and you are at knife-point...
I remember when Halo came out my friend would come round my house and we'd play 2 player spit-screen for hours. Then he'd go home and play single player for the same amount of time just to get to where we'd got to in co-op mode...
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Beerjerker
Grand Admiral
Seems kind of like fixing an issue no one's actually had to deal with yet. I'd rather they added convenience later when it's found to be needed, rather than take away a convenience when it's found to be exploitable. I'm fine waiting and seeing how it develops instead of trying to fix something that hasn't been built enough to break yet. This may be getting [CONCERNED] about stuff a year or two away still, but that's just my take on it.
Goodbye, Agent Smith, never met you enough to miss you but wish you all the best!
Goodbye, Agent Smith, never met you enough to miss you but wish you all the best!
supitza
Vault Dweller
I'd rather have traveling times reduced.
Imagine you need to realistically and fidelity-ly travel from one side of the 'verse to another. If their initial plan holds, you'll have to travel for hours and you'll get bored shitless. Yes, your quantum travel will be interrupted by pirates, anomalies or whatever, but I think that will become annoying really fast. If you want to get from A to B, you don't want to be interrupted every few minutes and be delayed from reaching your destination.
Yes, we want realism and fidelity, but we still want to be able to enjoy and play the game.
Imagine this:
- Hey, Montoya, let's meet in X system.
- Okay, it's going to take me 2 hours to get there because of CR's realism.
- Great, I'll watch this paint dry while I wait for you.
- Hey, Montoya, listen, I might be 4 hours late because I keep getting interrupted by pirates and whatnot while trying to fly to you.
Maybe it's time teleportation made it into the official SC lore?
Imagine you need to realistically and fidelity-ly travel from one side of the 'verse to another. If their initial plan holds, you'll have to travel for hours and you'll get bored shitless. Yes, your quantum travel will be interrupted by pirates, anomalies or whatever, but I think that will become annoying really fast. If you want to get from A to B, you don't want to be interrupted every few minutes and be delayed from reaching your destination.
Yes, we want realism and fidelity, but we still want to be able to enjoy and play the game.
Imagine this:
- Hey, Montoya, let's meet in X system.
- Okay, it's going to take me 2 hours to get there because of CR's realism.
- Great, I'll watch this paint dry while I wait for you.
- Hey, Montoya, listen, I might be 4 hours late because I keep getting interrupted by pirates and whatnot while trying to fly to you.
Maybe it's time teleportation made it into the official SC lore?
Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
Well said. From my perspective as one who seldom has time to play any sort of game, a game that requires hours of sitting with nothing going on is never going to earn its way into my day. I need to be able to log in, enjoy a couple hours break and log back out. I think those who have much more time will necessarily see where the balance between realism and ease ought to be as different. If you can play thirty hours a week, you won't mind so much spending ten hours sitting. OTOH, if you play six hours per week, there's no way you'd be involved in any activities where you sit for more than a few minutes.
Concur with this, strongly. The limited play time I have would be better served doing stuff and things rather than travelling for hours on end.
Exactly this. Well said.
supitza
Vault Dweller
Would you really be okay with 1/3 of your playing time being an interactive loading screen?
Remember World of Warcraft when your flightpaths weren't unlocked: you'd hop on your mount, press Caps Lock to keep going forward and watch your grandchildren grow into adults while you traversed the continent.
Good point.
I suppose Origin isn't called Origin "Jumpworks" for nothing. Hopefully they'll have some kind of wormhole skipper/joiner that'll let you go A to D rather than A to B.
This is the issue that will need a great solution. How do you make the universe vast and give exploration meaning while still allowing players to link up and play together.
Perhaps the solution is to allow clones to be spawned at clone pods in larger stations as well as the Endeavor. It doesn't help the player get their ship to the location but it does allow fast travel of the player themselves to hub locations.
Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
Well before we argue for different positions, I;d like to hear what the peeps think are the dangers of the proposed Agent Smithing" solution that has been intended until now. What specifically are the exploits one has to be concerned with and why are these so important they would rule out Smithing as a solution?
I know if I owned an Idris, I'd be all for Smithing.
Y'know, i'd like to know that too. After considering it, im not sure i can think of any issues beyond very minor ones (see below), but nothing that should prohibit it. If they didnt take exploits into account, there'd probably be some ways to get ahead a lot faster, but any exploits i can think of right now can also be fixed fairly easily.
On the technical side, it'd really depend on how they coded their NPCs. I could see it being relatively simple to implement, but i can also see it being super complex and requiring some crazy technical wizardry.
I think the main exploit CIG was concerned about was buying a large amount of rare cargo somewhere you can get it for cheap, and then 'agent smithing' over to your buddy at the destination and selling it for lots of money. The (incredibly) obvious solution to that is just to not let you access you main character's inventory when you are smithing, and instead access the inventory of the NPC you are controlling. Implementation-wise, they might run into some issues with the way they've made inventories work, but then again, it might not.
There's probably a similar issue with letting people use their UEC when 'smithed', but it'd basically be effectively the same as wiring money from player to player, which i'm fairly certain they'll let us do. Again, if it's that big an issue, don't let us access our own UEC. On the other hand, we probably shouldn't be able to access the NPC's wallets either, since that'd cause some problems :grin:. A couple solutions would be letting us access our own money, but only letting us spend a certain amount (like 5k UEC or something) or just straight up not letting us buy anything.
Greifing might end up being an issue, with people using player-controlled NPCs as the equivalent of throwaway accounts. This one, i cant think of a catch-all solution for, but I'm sure there could be one. Maybe crimestats earned while smithed carry over? Except that causes other problems, so maybe have a fine for earning a crimestat while controlling an NPC. Less effective, but still a deterrent, eh?
Having people be able to hire dirt cheap NPCs who are really sucky and then have those NPCs controlled by people who are really good might cause balance issues, but it's similar to just flying around with your friend actually there, so it's not too big a deal, and if they're that concerned, they can make NPC stats have some effect on the player controlling them (Like, say, if this NPC has never shot a gun before, have a 25% decrease in accuracy or something. Not enough to be unplayable, but enough to be proper annoying).
There's more than likely several other issues, but i can't think of em right now. Anyone else got any ideas?
At the moment the only thing I can think of for why smithing is a bad idea is that NPC's will always be less capable then human players. So allowing a solo captain to take out a full ship of NCP's and then know that their corp will jump into the NPC avatars at the first sign of trouble would go against the spirit of the game and the concept of invested time. No only that but you no longer risk your avatar with death and disfigurement which are both part of the planed vers.
While I understand the desire to make distances in the vers important I personally don't see how smithing impacts the cost of move goods and ships around. Which to me is the bigger factor as it controls the flow of influence and wealth. So yes cloning or smithing would allow the player to travel all over the vers it doesn't give them access to trade goods at the current location or any of their ships not at that location.
As development roles forward I hope they come to realize that they need a game mechanic that allows players to quickly travel to their friends location to join them on an adventure for the lack would turn it into lots of solo players doing their own thing.
While I understand the desire to make distances in the vers important I personally don't see how smithing impacts the cost of move goods and ships around. Which to me is the bigger factor as it controls the flow of influence and wealth. So yes cloning or smithing would allow the player to travel all over the vers it doesn't give them access to trade goods at the current location or any of their ships not at that location.
As development roles forward I hope they come to realize that they need a game mechanic that allows players to quickly travel to their friends location to join them on an adventure for the lack would turn it into lots of solo players doing their own thing.
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Noobifier suggests that, "...with a little bit of planning, casual players could link up at a destination..."
I suggest that using 'casual' and 'planning' in the same sentence is oxymoronic, like 'military' and 'intelligence'
committing to future ops begins to feel more like a job than fun
RL interferes too often to keep firm commitments in-game
'casual' is jumping into Discord and saying, "Anybody that wants to [insert activity here], X up and get your ass to [insert location here] now!"
any mechanic that disallowed that would hurt smaller orgs far more that it would hurt TEST
then sheer size would be the 'exploit'
our Eve Online experience tells us that maybe 10% of an org's members log in on any given day
for smaller orgs, finding someone near you to link up with would be hard
but with 17,000 members, TESTes could expect to find some mates close by at any time
so smaller orgs need the ability to teleport more than we do
also, long travel times advantage those with multiple accounts
which takes us into pay-to-win territory
so, while teleporting might break immersion, it's still better for the game
[/WALL OF TEXT]
Noobifier suggests that, "...with a little bit of planning, casual players could link up at a destination..."
I suggest that using 'casual' and 'planning' in the same sentence is oxymoronic, like 'military' and 'intelligence'
committing to future ops begins to feel more like a job than fun
RL interferes too often to keep firm commitments in-game
'casual' is jumping into Discord and saying, "Anybody that wants to [insert activity here], X up and get your ass to [insert location here] now!"
any mechanic that disallowed that would hurt smaller orgs far more that it would hurt TEST
then sheer size would be the 'exploit'
our Eve Online experience tells us that maybe 10% of an org's members log in on any given day
for smaller orgs, finding someone near you to link up with would be hard
but with 17,000 members, TESTes could expect to find some mates close by at any time
so smaller orgs need the ability to teleport more than we do
also, long travel times advantage those with multiple accounts
which takes us into pay-to-win territory
so, while teleporting might break immersion, it's still better for the game
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