Open Play and Crime and Punishment; a Proposed Holistic Approach

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Lovely idea...

But BGS having a 'bonus' for playing in open... No thanks! Leave the one thing that every player affects equally alone, wanting to penalise those who don't play in open (perhaps a console player who can't afford the online play tax imposed by both manufacturers) is entirely wrong.

But, PowerPlay an open only exercise I can get right behind.
 
Your point is neither obvious nor valid when it comes to BGS. I encourage you to go back and listen to old live streams. Frontier staff have made statements that directly contradict your assumptions. The "intent" of the BGS mechanics are clearly a primarily PvE activity. I don't disagree that giving PvP players a meaningful game loop is a laudable goal. However shoehorning BGS into this role does not make sense to me. Powerplay however has PvP mechanisms built into its design, expanding on those may be a better fit for your goal.
But they had to remove gaining merits for killing players, because of rather obvious abuse.

Powerplay was intended for PvP, but then they added these special gear you can't get any other way.

And as PvP it did not work, as all that you had to do was to keep a loaner sidewinder around and offer you mates free kills, then they would return the favour.

All players will game the system, when painite and diamonds had broken demand calculation everyone mined those. But that did not really ruin the game for the explorers, it just mean that when they returned and wanted to upgrade, it could be done quickly. Perhaps too quickly, but that is another discussion.

PvP outside arenas, duels, and war zones (ie PvP as a criminal non-consentual activity) have perpetrators and victims, and gankers love victim blaming.

Personally, I would love to see some creative instancing, so that conflict zones (from wars) and compromised beacons were always open. You can chose to go in there, and chose to leave. But since mass murders in general would be expected to be hunted down, killed and locked up (several times over) you should have the option of not having those in your game loop.
 
The problem is that this can never be achieved by player actions. Gankers will play the system to ruin other players game. They do not want a challenge, they are not interested in anything else than ruining other players game.

They can't do it when we play in groups they are not allowed in, so they use the forums instead.
And my proposed changes would make them pay so much to it that they would be hard pressed to continue.
 
‘Seal clubbing’ is bad for the game as attacking the new players immediately induces them to either quit the game or go to Solo forever.

I think all it comes down to this and the way simpler way to fix it might be to just make things more safe by default for multirole ships to frustrate the murderhobos with things like adding armor bonuses to SRV bays or adding some sort of armored cargo racks that give a fraction of the bonus of HRP/MRPs, even straight shield bonuses for unarmed ships.
 
If any player is attacked by another player and has ‘Report crimes’ turned on, the ATR should respond within ten seconds.

I feel like even this is WAY too fast, I could see normal police in vipers and anacondas in 10 seconds being fine, with ATR being a probability after 3 minutes depending on notoriety be fine. Even in the medium systems, which is a 20 second response time, is still way too fast.

Response times this fast would kill piracy in high and medium systems because players would just have to wait 10-20 seconds before the pirate is forced to run. Disregarding the fact a pirate doesn't want to kill their prey, it would be very easy for a trader to force then to fire on them and watch as the pirate gets ATR dropped on them in 10 seconds.

The response times should be increased to at least 3 minutes for ATR in high security and not even be guaranteed, and instead scale off notoriety of the attacker. Normal police in 10 seconds in a high security system is fine, as well as in medium and low.
 
I think all it comes down to this and the way simpler way to fix it might be to just make things more safe by default for multirole ships to frustrate the murderhobos with things like adding armor bonuses to SRV bays or adding some sort of armored cargo racks that give a fraction of the bonus of HRP/MRPs, even straight shield bonuses for unarmed ships.

With regards to this, engineered defenses are WAY stronger than engineered weapons. If you put engineered shields and shield boosters on your trade ship, and fly away from a gank correctly by jousting your attacker and plotting a high wake, you will not die I guarantee it.
 
The bounty comes out of their wallet under the proposed change, having them just sit and kill each other just moves money back and forth with no gains.

No gains and no losses, other than a single rebuy. It makes the proposal totally toothless to where you can essentially clear your bounties at any point.

There has to be more net loss for the proposal to make sense as an actual deterrent.
 
With regards to this, engineered defenses are WAY stronger than engineered weapons. If you put engineered shields and shield boosters on your trade ship, and fly away from a gank correctly by jousting your attacker and plotting a high wake, you will not die I guarantee it.

Yeah, but it seems like most players don't, or would rather play in solo than make that compromise and giving in there would only really disadvantage the murderhobos while making the game more fun and forgiving for everyone else, even people who want to put a SRV in their PVP ships.
 
I would similarly like to see more players in Open to interact with each other as opposed to having a ‘ghost town’-feeling universe where the majority of players choose to play in Solo or Private Group as opposed to Open mode because of the perception (slightly mistaken though I believe it to be) that playing in Open is needlessly putting oneself at risk of being murdered consequence-free.
I think that the perception that "most players choose to play in Solo or Private Group" is false. (And Frontier did once say it was, though this was several years ago and it might not hold today)

Comparing the number of players I see in Open to the system traffic report, I reckon I see over half of the number I'd expect to be in the system at any time. In general the thing which means I see more players is not anything Frontier might do to encourage people into Open ... but the things they do to encourage people to play the game at all.

  1. Player piracy should be a viable option whereby there is significant wealth gain possible with increased risk to the player to encourage acquisitive piracy over senseless murder.
The proposals you've put forward would kill player piracy - what's left of it, and it was never particularly practical! - stone dead.

You're proposing - for the crime of shooting a clean player to death - a bounty equal to your own ship value (at least), and global presentation of your location to player bounty hunters, who you're also not allowed to kill.

So: you rob a player - shoot out their drives, hatchbreak their hold, don't kill anyone. You get a bounty for this. This makes you a valid target for player bounty hunters ... who you're not allowed to shoot down, because that will give you a ridiculously large bounty, and a target flag to make it easier for the next one to find you. And if you shoot them down too? Your bounty increases exponentially.

This is not workable. This is the fundamental big problem of "we support piracy but not murder" proposals - unless you're planning to make piracy (assault, hatchbreaking) legal, pirates must be able to fight back against bounty hunters without severe penalty. But the game can't tell - without a list of exploits for the gankers a mile long - the difference between a bounty hunter and any other player, when it comes to a wanted pirate killing a clean bounty hunter.

Either kill piracy too, and do it deliberately ... or accept the cost that a wanted player shooting back at a clean player can't be punished all that severely, because that's a necessary and valid part of being a pirate.
(Hey, forget "what happens if a bounty hunter comes after you later", what about "what if the trader has a player escort?" - they could be in a Freewinder and you still wouldn't be allowed to kill them!)

  1. Powerplay and BGS effects are weighted such that any effect upon these systems is 5x for activities conducted in Open only as opposed to Private Group or Solo mode. If at any time for any reason between accepting the mission or merits and turning in the mission or merits you enter any mode other than Open, you are automatically relegated to receiving the lower amount of credit.
This is practical for Powerplay but would be actively unhelpful for the BGS. The background passing traffic from players who don't have any particular political agenda is as much a BGS tool as what anyone deliberate is doing.

It'd also be either incredibly exploitable for the BGS, or have incredibly unintuitive rules, for what counted as "doing an activity in Open". For example, if I dock at a station in Solo carrying 120t of Fruit+Veg, and then relog to Open, pick up a source mission for Fruit+Veg, and complete it with my hold cargo, the entire mission took place in Open.

What if someone sells to a carrier in Solo, then someone else picks up the cargo from the carrier in Open to take it the "last leg" for 0.1 Ls to the station? (What if half the cargo on the carrier was sold to it in Open, and half in Solo? Do you get to choose which you pick up or just get a proportionate mix?). If a pirate steals some cargo in Open which was picked up in Solo, is the cargo still Solo-flagged or not? etc.

Question: would you also weight it so that if I pick up 10t of cargo from a station in Open, 50t of cargo disappears from the station's supply? That's 5x as effective, too, and also makes no sense whatsoever.

This is an opt-in PvP-flagging system in which players are incentivized to fight other players.
I appreciate the idea and principle, but what's to stop a pair of players taking it in turns to blow up each other's Freewinders? That'd be way quicker and cheaper than actually doing this properly, but counts the same for points.
(Equally, why shouldn't genuine Freewinder duels between new but enthusiastic PvPers be allowed to count)

The way you've got it set up, a Harmless-Elite pair taking it in turns to blow each other up would both gain points considerably faster than an Elite-Elite or Harmless-Harmless pair doing the same, too, which is probably a good use for an alt account. Sure, someone else could theoretically come along and interrupt, but if you're working off a carrier in a system three thousand LY above the galactic plane, it's going to be a lot of effort for them to do so!

Frontier would then take players who participated in the weekly contest and, similar to how CGs currently work, pay some actual decent rewards in credits (and possibly even more creative prizes).
... especially if there are good prizes to be had.

as one of their members killing another of their members would be among the highest possible taboos.
Where does this come from? An organisation that - as originally founded - gave out rank solely for being the biggest most indiscrimate murderer getting sensitive over what "counts"? They're going soft.

not accidental shooting that does not result in a kill [...] also not any single-contact crashes such as the shieldless ‘suicidewinders’ used to trick people into killing you
Be right back, just ramming small player ships to death with impunity. So long as I get them in one blow (after someone else has "accidentally" shot them down to a few percent hull, perhaps?) it's fine and doesn't count as murder. Good to know :)

Gankers will exploit the loopholes all over the place ... station rammers will just run into you twice with a ship that can survive the first blow to leave you with the penalty anyway, etc.

And as above: shooting down the bounty hunter who comes after you for your (even PvE!) crimes is murder of another player under the game rules. This should not be penalised - especially since you can shoot down NPC bounty hunters just fine. How much fun do you think player bounty hunters will have if their targets all instantly high-wake because they don't want an even higher permanent bounty?

however I would very much like to see ships (whether NPC or player) drop their full cargo, minus some randomly determined loss due to destruction, upon being killed.
Agreed here. The NPC pirates already basically act as if this is true.

  1. ANARCHY SYSTEM: This should be VERY risky — basically think being in the worst neighborhood in your country at midnight. If any player is attacked by anyone, there will be no response. Player attacks and murders of any kind will not be reported. Going into these systems should scare any but the most brave/foolish. Even in Solo mode, you should be afraid: there should be a much greater percentage chance for highly-engineered NPC pirates (including wings) to attack you. But these should also be potentially the most lucrative systems: the biggest bounties are here, the most pristine mining rings are here, and missions to go to these systems should pay more.
The problem is that Anarchy factions are already considerably weaker in the BGS (making up only ~3% of inhabited space), and this just gives much more incentive for people to remove them. With low passing traffic - and a big incentive for passing traffic not to go to an Anarchy system in Open! - they'll be very vulnerable to a targeted attack. Also, being constantly attacked by NPCs will make it harder for pro-Anarchy players to support their own jurisdictions, or patrol supercruise against lawful agents!

Lucrativity is hardly a big incentive - and this applies to the "more money for paying in Open" idea, too - in a game where I can if I want already earn the price of a new large ship in an hour of missions anyway. It's not going to get anyone to change their behaviour or mode (especially since if you can't do it reliably without dying, it's not actually more lucrative).
 
@rdc000 You clearly either didn’t read it or didn’t understand it or are being purposefully obtuse. The murderers will all be on the board as targets for the consensual PvP crowd to earn their rewards but the murderers themselves cannot collect any reward while they carry notoriety. Therefore money would be funneled from their pockets to the consensual PvP players.
 
@Ian Doncaster regarding Player Piracy you are simply wrong. 1. Pirates in anarchy would have no punishment. 2. Player pirates who do not KILL players would not gain notoriet at all. Therefore the premise of your argument about a player disabling a ship and pirating it being hunted down is completely false. re read the proposal and you will see this.
 
You clearly either didn’t read it or didn’t understand it or are being purposefully obtuse. The murderers will all be on the board as targets for the consensual PvP crowd to earn their rewards but the murderers themselves cannot collect any reward while they carry notoriety. Therefore money would be funneled from their pockets to the consensual PvP players.
It was not clear to me that murders could not collect bounties at all, only that they could not participate in the tourney.

A direct bounty system with no net loss will always have workarounds. With no net loss in credits all this restriction means is the addition of clean alts to the mix.
 
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So I have watched with great interest as Frontier has made a series of changes to the game to help improve its overall long term health and viability. We know that advances in players' ability to do things cooperatively are coming with Odyssey and currently Frontier is making balance changes to earnings for various game loops.


I would very much like to see Powerplay and BGS be changed in favor of Open play. I would similarly like to see more players in Open to interact with each other as opposed to having a ‘ghost town’-feeling universe where the majority of players choose to play in Solo or Private Group as opposed to Open mode because of the perception (slightly mistaken though I believe it to be) that playing in Open is needlessly putting oneself at risk of being murdered consequence-free.


As such, I’ve come up with a set of suggestions concerning direct and indirect PvP, as well as crime and punishment in Elite that I think would go some way to addressing this, and I’d love your feedback on them.

Introduction and assumptions
The main ideas incorporated herein are based on the following assumptions that I believe to be true, and that I think (based on comments made by Frontier in the past) that Frontier also believe.


  1. More players playing the game in Open mode will make the galaxy more vibrant.
  2. PvP players also deserve the right to have an enjoyable play loop.
  3. This right should not extend to consequence-free mayhem.
  4. ‘Seal clubbing’ is bad for the game as attacking the new players immediately induces them to either quit the game or go to Solo forever.
  5. Player piracy should be a viable option whereby there is significant wealth gain possible with increased risk to the player to encourage acquisitive piracy over senseless murder.
  6. There should be some meaning to the various system security states: High Security, Medium Security, Low Security and Anarchy systems should all feel different.

I strongly believe that Frontier agrees with the above statements and the overhaul to the crime and punishment system in 2018 included changes that support this view. However, I don’t think that the game’s current crime and punishment system quite achieves these goals, because of the following:


  • The most dangerous places in the galaxy are reliably the systems with the most players in them. This is irrespective of the system’s security level.
  • Players still routinely report that they feel they are being killed with impunity in high-security systems.
  • Very few players engage in piracy (as opposed to simple player-killing).
  • Because of a lack of viable opportunity for fun and rewarding play within their chosen gameplay loop, bored PVP players end up with nothing to do more attractive for them than causing mayhem, and when they choose this path they find that it’s far too easy to get away with.

The below set of proposals are my attempt to achieve the goals that Frontier have said in the past that they have for the crime and punishment system in Elite.

Open, Powerplay and the BGS
With the above goals in mind, I would like to submit for your consideration the following changes:


  1. Powerplay and BGS effects are weighted such that any effect upon these systems is 5x for activities conducted in Open only as opposed to Private Group or Solo mode. If at any time for any reason between accepting the mission or merits and turning in the mission or merits you enter any mode other than Open, you are automatically relegated to receiving the lower amount of credit.
  2. All activities should pay out 1.5x in Open mode. Mining should generate more ore. material farming should generate more mats, mission-running should pay out more credits, exploration data should pay out better, trade missions should pay out more. Every aspect of the game should pay out better in every way to incentivize this mode of play without taking away anything from those players who wish to play in Solo. They will still earn exactly the same money they make now.

Given that this is a boost to earnings in Open rather than a nerf to earnings in the other game modes, the only possible objection to this (and the above suggestion in point 1) that a player might have is because they want to be able to affect other players without running the risk of being opposed. In my view, this isn’t a legitimate objection.


Note: It would be simpler to just nix BGS Influence gain and Powerplay merit-earning in any game mode other than Open, and this would be my real preference. But the above suggestions allow much the same behavioral effect without ‘nerfing’ any aspect of a Solo player’s experience. I am well aware of the historical arguments on this issue and it is for this exact reason that I offer a compromise whereby Solo players can continue exactly as they are now while still offering a concession to the obviously valid point of the majority of BGS and Powerplay groups that these gameplay loops were intended to be open to the wider variety of player interaction found in Open.


The current system of not really providing PvP players with meaningful gameplay loops (other than going to San Tu and trying to match up or using external Discord servers) has led to a large number of well-equipped player killers that are bored and, as such, run amok. In my opinion, this is both a failure to engage these players as well as a disservice to those upon whom they take their boredom out. I would like to propose a whole new system that would allow for dynamic gameplay to keep the ‘wolves’ happily killing other wolves and remove the incentive for the wolves to kill ‘sheep’, for all but the most determined of griefers (which will be addressed further down). My idea to accomplish this is the following:

PvP System
This is an opt-in PvP-flagging system in which players are incentivized to fight other players. It would function similarly to a weekly CG. Once opted in, you are locked to Open until that weekly cycle ends. The rewards of the system would be awarded similar to a CG with rewards for the top 10 Commanders, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. In addition, the top 10 Commanders' names would be posted every week as an acknowledgment of their skill and an inducement for those who seek bragging rights to keep at it. The entire point of this system is for PvP Players to become each other’s content in a way that is both sanctioned and well rewarded by Frontier. These players deserve to feel heard, appreciated and rewarded just as much as any PvE focused players and this system will allow them to do so in a structured manner which, I very much hope, will capture the attention of most thus causing them to opt-out of the ‘Senseless griefing’ play loop.

Rankings
Per kill, the reward would be the Combat Rank Points (CRP) of the target Commander, plus 0.25x the Points Owned by the Target (POT). Killed Commanders lose no points. The reward formula would then be: Points Earned = CRP + (POT x 0.25).



Combat Rank Points (CRP)


Cmdr.HarmlessMostly harmlessNoviceCompetentExpertMasterDangerousDeadlyElite
Target123456789
Harmless12.001.000.670.500.400.330.290.250.22
Mostly Harmless24.002.001.331.000.800.670.570.500.44
Novice36.003.002.001.501.201.000.860.750.67
Competent48.004.002.672.001.601.331.141.000.89
Expert510.005.003.332.502.001.671.431.251.11
Master612.006.004.003.002.402.001.711.501.33
Dangerous714.007.004.673.502.802.332.001.751.56
Deadly816.008.005.334.003.202.672.292.001.78
Elite918.009.006.004.503.603.002.572.252.00
Galaxy map flag

When opted in, players will be displayed on the galaxy map (perhaps via a red ‘friend symbol’), along with their current ‘value’ according to the above table. Players with Notoriety will be opted in automatically.


The above system should be thought of as the ‘carrot’ side of the PvP rework. This system would give PvP players a fun mode of play that will hopefully challenge and engage them, as opposed to murdering those who have no interest in that aspect of play.


Frontier would then take players who participated in the weekly contest and, similar to how CGs currently work, pay some actual decent rewards in credits (and possibly even more creative prizes). Once set up, this system would just keep rolling every week — moving a high portion of the killers from bored to engaged in a system that gives them bragging rights as well as decent rewards while segregating them from non-combat players by motivation where possible.


Now that we have covered the ‘carrot’ side, let's take a look at the ‘stick’ side of things. The idea here is to maintain the freedom of murderous psychopaths to act as they choose, but provide a large disincentive for them to engage in this behavior — just as in real-life society, engaging in certain behaviors carries penalties so prohibitive as to hopefully largely dissuade these activities.


A determined player-killer who chooses to ignore the consensual PvP system described above (and those other brilliant community-created consensual PvP loops which are already adequately organized) should be able to attack others, but with more consequence than currently exists.


First of all, every ship sensor should have a Kill Warrant Scanner built-in. Forcing the hunters of criminals to waste a slot on a Kill Warrant Scanner both puts them at a disadvantage to the criminals and greatly lowers the chance that player killers will come across another player who can scan them for bounties. Many griefers may have a massive amount of bounties in dozens of systems, and they should always be at risk of all players having access to this information. In addition, I would point out that gankers and griefers regularly prioritize killing anyone found with a Kill Warrant Scanner — this would remove their ability to do this. From a lore perspective, I would point out that it would be entirely within the Pilots Federation’s interest to incorporate this change as one of their members killing another of their members would be among the highest possible taboos.


All kills versus other players (only kills, not accidental shooting that does not result in a kill, also not any single-contact crashes such as the shieldless ‘suicidewinders’ used to trick people into killing you) should be treated entirely differently to NPC kills. For kills against other players the following system should be engaged:


  1. Notoriety should apply to both the player and the ship.
  2. Notoriety should cease to apply to players killing NPC ships. The existing system of bounties and NPC bounty hunters adequately deals with PvE crime.
  3. The value of the ship flown by the player committing the murder should be added to the base value of the bounty. A meta FDL valued at 149M would result in the first kill receiving an addition to the penalty of 149M for their first murder. This value should be doubled for every additional murder. The vast majority of ‘seal clubbers’ will chain several kills over the course of a play session. Increasing the penalty incurred for what are, in essence, serial killers seems to be simple common sense.
  4. Players acting as PvP bounty hunters should receive the full bounty payout for killing the offending player. If in a wing, the bounty should be split evenly between all members. This is balanced by ensuring that the player criminal who dies has to pay that entire penalty out of their own net wealth. Criminals would not be able to abuse this as a money transfer method as it's all coming from them. If they do not have the funds to pay the penalty then they should be put into debt after the liquidation of any assets owned to pay the penalty. At worst, a person gaming the system would be able to avoid paying for their crimes — but only at the expense of being reset back to a starter Sidewinder, and even then having to choose to either earn the money to pay back that debt or abandon the account and go through the process of spending all the time to unlock engineers and regain Powerplay modules, etc. Essentially, you could game this system to a very limited extent — but at great cost of your time, and those added days or weeks to rebuild a new account in which serial killers are not murdering innocent players is well worth the small subsidy by the Pilot’s Federation.
  5. Any commander with Notoriety should automatically be flagged in the weekly PvP system described above — not as a contestant but as a ‘murderer’, with an added bonus in point value. This incentivizes PvP players to hunt them for their bounties. They would have no way to unflag from this until their murder penalty has been paid. They would, however, not be able to claim any credits or points under that system while carrying the Murderer status. Those who choose to commit murder of other players would in essence be a part of the game but not as contestants, only as prey.

Basically, the TL;DR of this is that combat-oriented players get a cool new system to test their mettle against each other for profit and bragging rights or they can choose to senselessly murder non-combatant players (while accepting the stiff penalties) — but they can’t do both. I am hoping they will choose the former out of self-interest, but even if they don’t, there are enough roadblocks along the mayhem path to cause them serious issues. All of the above would cumulatively provide a lot more opportunity for consensual PvP while massively disincentivizing non-consensual PvP.

Player piracy
While being a serial murderer should not be an attractive career path because of its effect on the experience of others, there should still be a place for player piracy. Knowing how and where to conduct these activities will be discussed below, however I would very much like to see ships (whether NPC or player) drop their full cargo, minus some randomly determined loss due to destruction, upon being killed. This would allow for killers who are smart enough to stay in anarchy systems to actually earn money in their playstyle. Once again, the point of this is to provide smart criminals with opportunities, as opposed to mindlessly murdering new players with nothing worth taking.

System security states
Ok, so now we’ve covered the other points — let’s get into the idea of making the various system states have meaning. High Security, Medium Security, Low Security and Anarchy systems should all feel different. One of the things you will always hear from Elite 1984 players was how scared they were when jumping into an anarchy system.


Frontier has said several times that they want the different security ratings of the systems to affect the player’s experience, but at present, this is only true of the NPC interactions. Players, by far the biggest threat in the game to other players, largely ignore system security states. The most dangerous systems in the game are always the ones with the most players in them — regardless of security rating. This cannot be what Frontier intended.


Here, then, is my idea of how system states should be a modifier for all of the above changes:


  1. HIGH SECURITY: This should be nearly absolutely safe for all players to play in Open mode, knowing that they are basically in the equivalent of hanging out near City Hall in the middle of the afternoon with police presence visible. If any player is attacked by another player and has ‘Report crimes’ turned on, the ATR should respond within ten seconds. Experienced players will know that the time-to-kill in Elite with an experienced ship, especially against weaker targets, can be as low as a few seconds. This ATR response should be a wing of six, with five of them engaging the attacker and the sixth immediately providing healing beam/repair limpet assistance to the victim. All attacks by players on players automatically generate a bounty at a x2 multiplier. Player murders automatically generate the murder penalty described above, but x2. All engineer systems should be High Security systems.

  1. MEDIUM SECURITY: This should be a fairly safe place for players — basically analogous to a residential neighborhood. If any player is attacked by another player and ‘Report crimes’ is turned on, the ATR should respond within 20 seconds. This response should be a wing of ATR ships engaging the attacker. All attacks by players on players automatically generate a bounty. Player murders automatically generate the murder penalty.
  2. LOW SECURITY: This should be a little risky — basically think about being at the slightly dodgy end of town just after sunset. If any player is attacked by another player and ‘Report crimes’ is turned on, the ATR should respond within one minute (no response for NPC attacks). This response should be a wing of N+1 (where N is the number of attackers) engaging the attacker. Player murders automatically generate the x0.75 the murder penalty described above. There should be some minor incentives in greater payouts of some kind to incentivize high-level players to go to these systems, with missions or resources that pay more than in High or Medium Security systems.
  3. ANARCHY SYSTEM: This should be VERY risky — basically think being in the worst neighborhood in your country at midnight. If any player is attacked by anyone, there will be no response. Player attacks and murders of any kind will not be reported. Going into these systems should scare any but the most brave/foolish. Even in Solo mode, you should be afraid: there should be a much greater percentage chance for highly-engineered NPC pirates (including wings) to attack you. But these should also be potentially the most lucrative systems: the biggest bounties are here, the most pristine mining rings are here, and missions to go to these systems should pay more.

However, Anarchy systems more than 30ly from inhabited space should not spawn pirates. Crime should only be a consideration near populated systems. This is both common sense and an obvious concession to not unduly harm the exploration gameplay loop.


In addition to the above existing system states, I would add one more: OUTER RIM. Basically think of the Reavers in Firefly. Consider putting a 30ly ‘shell’ surrounding the Bubble (and all other inhabited spaces) where this system state exists. This should be an absolutely terrifying system in which all of the rules of Anarchy Systems apply, but in addition, there should be a much greater percentage of spawn rate for wings of highly-engineered NPC pirates to attack you. There should be some very high incentives in greater payouts of some kind to incentivize high-level players to go there.

Conclusion
So there are my thoughts. I know that this explanation was not brief but I did try to think it through to the best of my ability. I wish to thank anyone who took the time to read through all of this, whether you agree with my ideas or not. I would very much appreciate civil discussion on these topics. Please share what you like in this thread and discuss what could be done better or differently. I am not at all expecting Frontier to make these changes lightly or quickly, or even at all. I’m sure there are plenty of people smarter than I who could suggest even better ideas, but as I noted Frontier has shown fantastic willingness to rethink some long-existing issues for the health and viability of the game going forward, so I wanted to kick off a conversation on this matter that might generate a workable solution.


Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Further, I would very much like to thank Commanders: Arsen Cross, WolfDragon, Swordsmith95, Kontrolldon and Audaxius who contributed ideas to this proposal as well as Souvarine who, as always, I submitted my ramblings to in the hopes that he could make them somewhat presentable. Anything worthwhile in this post is completely their doing, any idea you cannot stand is mine alone. ;)

Very very detailed and exactly mostly hits in the middle of the hearts for many community based Elite Players and Squadron Members or Leaders.

1000 Thumbs up, especially for the Open BGS Bonus and for the PvP and Bounty Thing. It sounds like so many things we discusses and mostly of this points disappointed so much pilots in the last years... No chance to avoid BGS undermining, no chance for fair fights, open is killing zone for new players at CGoals andandand

You just hit my thoughts in every point and I wish we could be heard by FDev

o7 Cmdr Flo1101978
BLAU Squadron
Yinjian / H Man's Hub
 
I'm just here to support the use of "seal-clubber" as a replacement for ganker or griefer in referring to a player in a superior ship killing newbs or casual players for the lulz. The other terms have different, useful connotations. Yes, I am a pedant :geek:
 
No chance to avoid BGS undermining

An open bonused BGS not only does not solve this but goes against the whole point of the BGS itself. Better station traffic reports and intelligence on the BGS activity in zones you control is a much more sensible solution. This fits in with the design intent of the game and is a universe-based solution rather than artificial game-based limitation.
 
It was not clear to me that murders could not collect bounties at all, only that they could not participate in the tourney.

A direct bounty system with no net loss will always have workarounds. With no net loss in credits all this restriction means is the addition of clean alts to the mix.
The way I understood it is if I gank someone I get a bounty equal to the value of my ship at the minimum. If some one collects my bounty it comes out of my wallet. My ship is worth 50 million. I kill a dude, I now have a 50 million bounty. I do this 10 more times. I now have a 500 million bounty. Some one kills me to collect my bounty. 500 million is now transferred out of my personal bank account. So for ganking 10 people that cost me 500 million under the proposed change. Net loss. How many people are going to roll alts just to transfer credits and grind out engineering again just so they can farm a little salt? Oh I missed that the value doubled for every gank. My math may be off (I'm sure it is I suck at math) but I think my bounty would actually be 2.5 billion or more? Or is it 50^10 power? That's a lot of zeros. Imagine having your fleet carrier liquidated to cover your bounty or being in debt forever. I fail to see a work around for this. You die you lose. You try to pay it off you lose.

As I said in a previous post it's certainly harsh and I think the answer lays somewhere in the middle.

  1. Notoriety should apply to both the player and the ship.
  2. Notoriety should cease to apply to players killing NPC ships. The existing system of bounties and NPC bounty hunters adequately deals with PvE crime.
  3. The value of the ship flown by the player committing the murder should be added to the base value of the bounty. A meta FDL valued at 149M would result in the first kill receiving an addition to the penalty of 149M for their first murder. This value should be doubled for every additional murder. The vast majority of ‘seal clubbers’ will chain several kills over the course of a play session. Increasing the penalty incurred for what are, in essence, serial killers seems to be simple common sense.
  4. Players acting as PvP bounty hunters should receive the full bounty payout for killing the offending player. If in a wing, the bounty should be split evenly between all members. This is balanced by ensuring that the player criminal who dies has to pay that entire penalty out of their own net wealth. Criminals would not be able to abuse this as a money transfer method as it's all coming from them. If they do not have the funds to pay the penalty then they should be put into debt after the liquidation of any assets owned to pay the penalty. At worst, a person gaming the system would be able to avoid paying for their crimes — but only at the expense of being reset back to a starter Sidewinder, and even then having to choose to either earn the money to pay back that debt or abandon the account and go through the process of spending all the time to unlock engineers and regain Powerplay modules, etc. Essentially, you could game this system to a very limited extent — but at great cost of your time, and those added days or weeks to rebuild a new account in which serial killers are not murdering innocent players is well worth the small subsidy by the Pilot’s Federation.
  5. Any commander with Notoriety should automatically be flagged in the weekly PvP system described above — not as a contestant but as a ‘murderer’, with an added bonus in point value. This incentivizes PvP players to hunt them for their bounties. They would have no way to unflag from this until their murder penalty has been paid. They would, however, not be able to claim any credits or points under that system while carrying the Murderer status. Those who choose to commit murder of other players would in essence be a part of the game but not as contestants, only as prey.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
@rdc000 You clearly either didn’t read it or didn’t understand it or are being purposefully obtuse. The murderers will all be on the board as targets for the consensual PvP crowd to earn their rewards but the murderers themselves cannot collect any reward while they carry notoriety. Therefore money would be funneled from their pockets to the consensual PvP players.
But the system doesn't distinguish.

If you can't claim any reward while you have notoriety but you gain notoriety from killing other players, then only clean Cmdrs can kill other Cmdrs and be rewarded for it. But then as soon as they kill one, they gain notoriety and are instantly put on the board as a murderer, where you are stuck for the rest of the week. So you can only get one reward a week.
Penalising people who like to play the lawless lifestyle from being able to be rewarded for hunting other players, seems a bit counter intuitive. They're the best hunters most of the time.
 
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