Pirates vs Traders PvE/PvP

[Mímir]

Shallow gravedig, just thought I'd add my personal observations and recent experiences.

I think the transport vs. X discussion is a side issue when PVE has made trading 100% redundant. I've had a 4-year break and started with the veteran's package with a very nice transport 3 weeks ago, haven't used it for a minute (and I am never going to) because I've already gotten 3 accounts full of ships and more money than I am ever going to spend just by shooting NPC's. I did a bit of piracy, but there are no traders other than base suppliers, and they just pay up instantly and get on with their business. Piracy is completely dead. It's a complete waste of time from the pirate's perspective. Hours flying around with zero encounters until a mob of lawful players in combat ships desperate for action swoop in on you. I don't blame them, there's nothing else for them to do - there are no traders, so hardly any Pirates either.

Not only is piracy dead due to PVE, but the ridiculous NPC's also impede general player interaction. I tried a couple of hours of unlawful bounty hunting yesterday (even though it's pointless, just shooting NPC's nets me far more $) and had one guy break off a fight in the Badlands complaining about the Rogue NPC spawns and he instead went to WP with about a billion lawful NPC's waiting. We both logged off with no fight. Later I flew for 30 minutes to find some hostile players in Cortez that didn't even register my presence or responded to my greetings because they were busy doing PVE missions. Waited until they finished the mission and CD'd one of them only to get jumped by a spawning NPC razor gunboat death squad making it difficult to type and interact, not that the other player cared anyway as he just wanted to run some more missions. In both instances player interaction was directly killed by NPC's, and it's not like we were in the orbit of a capital planet that could excuse the excessive spawns. I really cannot understand why PVE and NPC's in general has been buffed to this level, it is so counter-productive.

No, I'm not upset that I didn't get any blues, I might as well have died if those fights had happened, the point is that it was never possible to properly interact in the first place, meaning that solo logging for anything other than Manhattan one-line text chat or PVE (and the occasional scheduled PVP events) is pointless. I'm not going to go to Cortez to seek out players again, because chances are that they are in a oorp PVE state. Piracy is pointless, people are doing PVE instead of trading. Between new added in bases, POB's and buffed NPC patrols, a lawful player is never further than 30 seconds away from safety within house space, so all solo PVP has to be more or less consensual where you PM and ask for a fight like it was conn. The dynamic nature of the gameplay has been undermined by the direction the mod has taken.

Players should be interacting with one another and that way propel their story and gameplay forward, rather than interact with NPC's. Rheinland vs. Liberty 4.85 lolbattle unquestionably provided far more RP and exciting spin-off activities than shooting NPC's in Cortez will ever do, for the life of me I cannot understand the thought process behind making PVE a "thing" on a roleplay server.*

Tl;dr: It's not ship X vs ship Y that is the issue, it's the fact that the mod has been gradually changed to be almost hostile towards unscripted player interactions, including piracy. It's just not a lot of fun, and sadly I don't think its possible to roll back when PVE is such a big part of the Discovery experience as it is now.

*That said, if you view the mod as an "enhanced and expanded" sandbox co-op/singleplayer version of Vanilla it is better than ever!

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