They have already addressed the features going from bit by bit to full feature release. They even reiterated it in All About Alpha 3.15 as Rich Tyrer is shifting over to SQ42 but still has projects in the Verse, as well as projects with in the next patch or two, will continue to be tier 0 implementation instead of the new plan of only releasing mostly finished features.I'd prefer to presume the first option of real and lasting consequence in a game and they are aiming for the Org system to become a major way of making teams and factions of people who can trust each other (In which case TEST needs to prepare a robust system for kicking out people who only join to disrupt the Org and ruin its reputation for us being able to trust and play with each other) but with it going in bit by bit rather than as a feature set, they need to tell us that's what's going on and to have at least an intended plan, the full intention which can be communicated and that everyone understands that's the direction which can then be modified as issues come to light - and although feedback is welcome for some things stop with the 'We'll work that out later' response as that just invites the community to fill in the gap, have a direction which doesn't rely on gauging the salt level to it first or salt is going to be the only flavour some players ever taste... maybe consulting trusted players/evo before even starting to implement the mechanics of the plan if it's going to be a big mechanic, so when the larger portion of players push back they can already have a thought out informed response prepared.
Personally, full loot isn’t going to work in SC. You are always going to be worried about someone ganking you because you have xyz item in your backpack. Therefore, you are going to shoot them before they shoot you.
Thus, cooperative gameplay is gone as you need to assume that if you meet another person, you are going to need to kill them if you get the chance…because you must assume they will do the same to you.
no medical gameplay, because people who respond will get killed. One person removed and dropped the weapons carried by someone who put out a medical beacon…told them this and that they would get their guns back…and when revived, they entered melee combat and killed the responding person. This is happening now in game.
CR wants a world where you need other people, but has designed a world where you can’t trust other players. He need to make a decision. Either this is a full loot game with open PvP everywhere, but you no longer need others to play the game or even pilot big ships and this turns into EvE online 2.0, or you dial it WAY back. Looting player corpses of all stuff is gone. You might get a drop or two, but the player retains their good on revive. PvP gets banished to small areas in-game (only certain systems don’t have immediate consequences against PvP actions) or becomes a 2 party consensual system. DoaS gets reworked. CRs ideas did not work out back in 1997 and they don’t work today for MMOs, at least, ones that have a decent number of players.
Not sure how cooperative gameplay is gone, in fact, a full PVP encourages cooperative gameplay as being a solo player is very risky where playing with friends means you have people watching your back. While some of the old school PVP aspects have gone but the wayside (think ultima online) often suffered from Anonymity in that players did not know who was hostile or not as it was all too easy to change rep, alts, and thus names. Games like EverQuest and WoW attempted to introduce a little more structure by having pvp servers but given the rewards were no different from their PVE servers never generated the same numbers (I would say the PVP servers had players who were far more adept at playing and the groups that formed were tight-knit in ways the PVE servers never saw even in the hardcore raid groups) Games like Rust, and Ark had a pretty sizable following but once again had no means to identify friend or foe or past reputation of that player's actions and so it was all too easy to get away with being an ahole.
I am not saying CIG will be able to achieve a great balance of freedom of action along with reputation to create a balance in players' interaction not always leading with shoot on sight. But the hope is there that they will be able to achieve it and they currently have a rather large dedicated group of testers to give feedback on how things are playing out and if it's going in the direction they originally envisioned. After all, it's the risk of being killed of being inconvenienced by the loss of gear/ship/time that drives the risk part of any game experience. Even in non-pvp games, it's still this mechanism while crafted by NPC scripts that drive the satisfaction of the reward. All PVP gives us is far more emergent gameplay than what can be realistically expected to be handcrafted by developers.
Losing your gear makes planning and logistics of an action important. It makes ships like the Apollo, Cutlass Red important as well as supply ships and drop ships vital to ground operations. It makes having buddies who can revive you and cover you desireable. And it makes the reputation system vastly important to the fundamental gameplay as it gives you the information needed to evaluate the risk of both NPC and players around you. It also punishes those who want to be trolls by preventing them from many areas as well as lacking the friends to survive in the more hostile areas.
So the examples of being shot in the back of the head at a spaceport or town marketplace unless in a seedy part of town are unlikely given how tied reputation is to all aspects of this game. And losing gear is important in that if you die it needs to have meaning.