Ladies and gentlemen, I like playing with myself.
Now, hold on, don’t get carried away. I mean to say that in a battle between unregulated multiplayer gaming and single player gaming, single player wins hands down, or at least it does for me.

It’s a matter of control. As a gamer, I play to unwind, to escape the humdrum reality of day to day life and to fantasise about another reality, one I can’t be part of in any other way. It’s important to me that the levers of control over that reality are accessible to me in such a way as I can select the experience I want to have. It may not be important to you, or the default settings may be exactly how you like them, but generally speaking, that’s not what I find when I play today’s games.

So what would I class as unregulated multiplayer? If there’s one thing that really defined that concept for me it’s this “A game system in which every player has unfettered access to all other players, regardless of any other factors such as the rank/skill level or personal preferences”.

It would be a very odd state of affairs if an MMO didn’t provide a means to block communication from another player. That would be a slide towards unregulated multiplayer. It would be similarly peculiar if, as say a level 50 player, I could elect to only combat level 1 players. That would be unregulated multiplayer. Imagine the stress of starting out, knowing that at any time a high level player could descend on you in an unbeatable combat scenario. It doesn’t bear thinking about. A game that sits close to this, but handles it cleverly, is Dark Souls (2/3 I didn’t play 1 for long so couldn’t say for sure). If you elect to engage in combat with another player, you can do so, even if they hopelessly outclass you, but you can also opt out and just fight the AI enemies (that also hopelessly outclass you).

So with that said, why am I bringing this up?
Elite: Dangerous has a slightly contentious, but reasonably clever way of dealing with the problem. In E:D you can play in Open (what I would consider unregulated), Private (semi-regulated) or Solo (completely PvE, completely regulated) modes. The slight kink in the neat separation of experiences there is that all of those modes take place in the same simulation. Private or Solo players are regarded by some as unseen, untouchable phantoms, pulling the levers of the universe in which Open, accessible players also reside. Adding to the potential for irritation, the impact on the simulation caused by these ghosts often goes against the wishes and attempted programmes of change of the Open players. I have felt some of this quite strongly myself. When Private and Solo players undermine our systems, safe from our pilots’ lasers, their unstoppable actions seem to hold sway over my actions, in that I must now fortify systems to counter their attacks. Attacks which I cannot prevent, halt or even frustrate.

Eagle eyed readers will notice that there’s a reasonable counterpoint here. From the standpoint of the Open players, Private and Solo players are dastardly immortal ghouls, tinkering with the hard work of the heroic Open warriors. It’s worth noting that from the perspective of the Solo or Private players, Open players are brutish violence addicted murderers, tinkering with the hard work of the Private/Solo stoics.

For this reason I think it’s a red herring to go down the track of saying that one group is oppressing the other. Both are active in the same space, and yet shall never meet. This is to the benefit, and detriment, of both. Whether that’s equal is impossible to ascertain, and I therefore hold that it’s immaterial to the question of whether the approach taken in E:D is reasonable.

Some of the quirks that the Open/Private/Solo system suffers from have the potential to break immersion. Is it sensible that a Solo player can partake in what’s described as a “Community Goal”? Doesn’t that contradict the name? Contrary to my position on the Open vs. Solo debate, I actually think it does somewhat, but I don’t think there’s another way to work it. The result of reserving Community Goals for Open participants only is that those who occasionally play in Open, but prefer not to get hassled by griefers simply won’t partake in the CG. This might suit the more militant Openists down to the ground, but I feel that goes against the spirit of Community much more than the alternative goes against the definition, a more serious crime in my book.

Is it the case that Solo and Private modes are used for some degree of under-cover, protected aggression? Undoubtedly it is. Is that reason enough to detach from the simulation, or worse still remove entirely, the Private and Solo modes? Absolutely not.

From a business standpoint, Frontier Developments wants as many engaged players as they can get. To say to that segment of the player base who aren’t willing, or able, to participate in player versus player combat, “Sorry, but your actions are now of no consequence to the simulation.” would likely lead a large proportion of that group simply moving on to other games.

From a technical perspective, even if it were politically possible to run separate simulations for those in Solo/Private, the physical, financial and informational cost of doing so is utterly prohibitive.

Given all of these points, I believe that Frontier currently have their game configured (with respect to player access to the simulation) in the most optimal way. There are a number of other things about the game that are unbalanced, frustrating, mindless and downright annoying, but the Open/Private/Solo aspect of the design is not one of them.