Open Play and Crime and Punishment; a Proposed Holistic Approach

[CMDR Kai Zen]

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.

if a strict criminal treatment seems mean, you could, you know... try not murdering players. Just a thought. Or if you want to kill players use the built in system laid out to allow you to do just that with consensual PVP with no penalty and active rewards. your post seems to be saying be nicer to seal clubbers and my response would be when have they shown such restraint?

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

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.

This response is again just patently false... if you are clean and kill a murderer or engage in the proposed PvP system of consensual PvP you would never gain notoriety. your comprehension of the stated facts seems so poor as to almost make one wonder if you are being disengenuous in your responses which would be most odd behavior for a forum moderator. Assuming this is not the case I will say again what really should not need to be said at all. Killing a murderer would grant you the bounty reward and in no way be a criminal act thus you would never gain notoriety for this act.

 

[rdc000]

If some one collects my bounty it comes out of my wallet.

I'm not sure you understand the current punishment system. You already have to pay the full value of your bounties when you die. This proposal removes the 2M cap on payouts and increases the bounties themselves. We are getting hung up on a minor point here. All you have to do is make the payouts something like 75% of the bounty value, as well as being split with wings.

 

[CMDR Mayonnaisee [NEWP]]

if a strict criminal treatment seems mean, you could, you know... try not murdering players. Just a thought. Or if you want to kill players use the built in system laid out to allow you to do just that with no penalty and active rewards. your post seems to be saying be nicer to seal lubbers and my response would be when have they shown such restraint?

I am by no means saying be nice to the seal clubbers, and there does have to be a system in place that would make it more difficult for gankers to do there thing. I just think bankrupting them for it is on the extreme end of things.

 

[Pigletslastand]

OP this is a FANTASTIC suggestion! Thanks for putting the time and considerable effort into this, it addresses everything that we all know is needed in a sensible way. I do hope Frontier listens to you. A masterful piece of work. GG

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

I am by no means saying be nice to the seal clubbers, and there does have to be a system in place that would make it more difficult for gankers to do there thing. I just think bankrupting them for it is on the extreme end of things.

Understood. I think that rewarding PVPers with the stones to scrap while happily ruining the day of seal clubbers is worth while but I will admit that maybe I’m too harsh. What would you suggest as a workable alternative?

 

[Ozric]

This response is again just patently false... if you are clean and kill a murderer or engage in the proposed PvP system of consensual PvP you would never gain notoriety. your comprehension of the stated facts seems so poor as to almost make one wonder if you are being disengenuous in your responses which would be most odd behavior for a forum moderator. Assuming this is not the case I will say again what really should not need to be said at all. Killing a murderer would grant you the bounty reward and in no way be a criminal act thus you would never gain notoriety for this act.

It says

All kills versus other players

1. Notoriety should apply to both the player and the ship.

5. Any commander with Notoriety should automatically be flagged in the weekly PvP system described above — not as a contestant but as a ‘murderer’, ... 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 for bounties 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

At no point does your proposal say anything about clean players not getting notoriety for killing a murderer. How would it distinguish between the two? Is wanted status taken into account, or is it just based on notoriety. So I'm afraid you didn't state these "facts", and once again my being a moderator has nothing to do with anything.

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

OP this is a FANTASTIC suggestion! Thanks for putting the time and considerable effort into this, it addresses everything that we all know is needed in a sensible way. I do hope Frontier listens to you. A masterful piece of work. GG

Thanks man! Please pass it on so hopefully more people can show support/offer modifications to make it better!

 

[Pigletslastand]

It will be unpopular with the company I keep but I will! LMAO

 

[CMDR Mayonnaisee [NEWP]]

I'm not sure you understand the current punishment system. You already have to pay the full value of your bounties when you die. This proposal removes the 2M cap on payouts and increases the bounties themselves. We are getting hung up on a minor point here. All you have to do is make the payouts something like 75% of the bounty value, as well as being split with wings.

Apologies, I thought we were talking about the proposed system, not what we have in place. A ganker under the proposed system would quickly be bankrupt for ganking which would be the point to curb the seal clubbing. How the bounty pays out is immaterial, the person doing the clubbing effectively goes broke and it's so prohibitive that most won't even consider ganking.

As for the payouts, yes they could be increased, to what value I'm not sure, but certainly not the entire amount of someone who has bounty in the hundreds of millions.

 

[Screemonster]

I googled "overthinking" and it lead me to this thread

 

[rdc000]

Please pass it on so hopefully more people can show support/offer modifications to make it better!

I hesitate to really reply to this due to the base issues, bad assumptions and mistakes I've already pointed out.

However in the spirit of the proposal itself, I see no mechanism for PvP dueling or events. Its an all or nothing locked in global PvP tourney.

The entire proposal has a locked in heavy handed approach to everything that does not fit the spirit of the current game. Draconian punishment for gankers, global time based PvP opt in, solo players essentially locked out of BGS participation. Its basically a different game.

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

It will be unpopular with the company I keep but I will! LMAO

i would hope that combat enthusiasts with the stones to scrap would LOVE this idea. Active gameplay loop with frofits, bragging rights and the chance to get rich at the expense of bullies who seek out unfair fights. What’s not to love?

 

[Arsen Cross]

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.

You are missing a distinction here. The system does distinguish between the two. Nothing in this system stops lawless, wanted commanders/murderers from claiming bounties on other players.

This system places commanders who commit murder into the ranking system to keep them in open, make them a valid target but the murderer status prevents them from claiming the tiered reward; while they retain the ability to kill anyone in the ranking system without additional penalty. They also would still be able to claim bounties on others like any other CMDR.

I think you are missing that separation. Think of the ranking system as separate, like pledging to powerplay. Just like powerplay it makes you a legal target to other powerplay pledges and bypasses the C&P system entirely when shooting each other. A true, Free For All pvp system which the pvp community currently attempts to emulate by socially pressuring each other to run crimes off.

Many PVP'ers (and myself) have wanted an indicator of when someone has crimes on or off. The ranking system here with its own indicator for that would bypass the need to make that change; leave the entire existing C&P system intact as-is and give the pvp'ers a means to identify willing participants easily and rank against each other.


The increased penalties for murdering people not 'pledged' to this proposed ranking system is meant as a deterrent to simple wanton killing for no reason; but in no way prevents it from happening. The existing bounty system would remain 100% intact and be unchanged. This system would be a layer on top of it; the PIlots Federation applying bounties on people who murder other members of the pilots Federation while providing an out for the crazies that want to murder each other.


The most important part of this system to me, in addition to all the above is by putting murderers into the system forcibly until their pvp bounty has been claimed - you ensure that they can't log out of open and play in solo. I have many gankers on my friends list so that I can get instanced with them because I like it when they try to kill me but have zero interest in their terrible social habits or committing pointless murders myself. Basically if I want those adrenaline rushes it's the best way to make sure I get instanced with them and get it.

The point though is that because of having those gankers on my friends list; I have years of journal data (and netlog data that predates the journal) outlining all the most prominent gankers going into solo/pg to avoid bounty hunters while grinding for their progression. An act that quite frankly disgusts me at the highest level. People who abuse the solo mode to avoid the social consequences of their actions to progress while coming into Open to force their will upon those who are simply minding their own business, only to hide again to grind without reprisal from bounty hunters.

Because of these lawless murderers only coming into open to gank you have a situation where bounty hunting is literally a near-useless dead end mechanic. Worthless 2m rewards for kills against seasoned murderers in maxed out meta engineered vessels hardly reflects the risk involved. Being forced to sacrifice survival ability to equip Kill Warrant Scanners to ensure they are actually punished for their crimes is a drastic gimping.

Personally I hated the rank system at first until I really stopped to analyze the effects. The truth of it is that it would have zero affect on the average player. The only people it would affect are those who opt into it or are thrown into it for murdering other players.

As for the other parts of this proposal...

• I could care less for adding/changing the way space is defined and think the OUTER RIM bit is meh.
• I do want the System Authority responses to be harsher and faster in high security space for PvP.
• I do want the security rating of a system to make it feel more or less dangerous appropriately.
• I want those who murder other players to be forced to risk facing consequences of their actions by the hands of another player. If you force someone to play your way; you should be made to risk being forced in the same way by someone else.

Changes I personally want for ATR...

• System authority should be assumed to be armed with the local systems emplaced defense networks sensor/satellites etc.
• 
  
• System authority should enter the instance with complete awareness of all ships in the instance and with complete scan data for all ships to correct the existing issue that they show up now and scan everyone in sequence and you are left to luck on whether they identify the perpetrator in a timely manner.
• 
  
• Spawn System Authority NPC’s summoned by a criminal action, directly on top of the criminal as if the System Authority wing dropped on them.
• 
  
• Each criminal that commits a crime against another player should have their own spawn of system authority that is dedicated to targeting them.
  ATR should be first-wave response on all PVP crimes in high security space.

Remote Assisting Wanted Players

• If a clean player uses a shield regeneration tool, repair limpet, refuel limpet, or other helpful modules on a target wanted in the current jurisdiction an “aiding and abetting” bounty should be placed on them to make them a legal target. This would prevent forcing players to either make themselves wanted to stop the healer or forcing them to leave an engagement that they could otherwise best their opponents.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

@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.

Yes, I did read it.

Forget Anarchy, virtually nowhere is Anarchy, Eurybia is the only semi-prominent system which is (which people mostly don't visit for its trade opportunities), CGs in Anarchy systems are ultra-rare and if you hang around most Anarchy systems waiting for another player to show up you'll be waiting a very long time.

Player pirates who do not KILL players would not gain notoriet at all.

Okay, a couple of scenarios - which were in my original reply, but pulling them out to be more clear.

Scenario 1:
Trader A is attacked by Pirate B in a traditional pirating Python. Pirate B does everything "right" for being a nice pirate, and just disables their drives and hatchbreaks them, then after scooping up a few tonnes of cargo, leaves them to reboot and continue on their way. Pirate B has committed "Interdiction", "Assault" and "Hatchbreaking" offences, which gain them a small bounty, but no notoriety.

Bounty Hunter C sees Pirate B flying along with a bounty and thinks "I'll have that!". They attack Pirate B. If Pirate B fires back and successfully kills Bounty Hunter C, they have killed a clean player, which is ganking and murder, for which there can be no excuse whatsoever. Pirate B's bounty increases from 1500 credits to 120 million credits, and they are placed on the murderer map for everyone else to have a go at too.

Scenario 2:
Trader A is attacked by Pirate B. A's friend, Sidewinder Escort C comes to their aid, firing off ECM and point defense to destroy B's limpets, and using force-shell Cannons to disrupt B's flight and aim. Pirate B can neither continuing pirating while C is about, but nor can they destroy C (which would be a matter of seconds, with their firepower!) without gaining a 120 million credit bounty and a murderer flag.


Now, obviously, B can avoid either of these scenarios by pirating in Anarchy systems only, and A can then avoid B entirely by just not going there.


...and another new scenario, based on my time as an Iridium Wing escort pilot, back in the days when explorers actually needed escorting once in a while...

Scenario 3:
Explorer A is returning to the bubble in Open. To protect their billions in data, currently held in an unshielded Asp Explorer, they have engaged Escort B in their defence, who is flying a full battle FDL. Ganker C shows up, flying an unengineered though mostly A-rated frag Vulture on their Harmless (newly reset and therefore Clean) account. The Vulture only costs ~26M credits, easily transferred from C's alt account at a carrier, and made back from a single easy mission nowadays.

C's Vulture is of course no real threat to B's FDL, but its full frag burst could nevertheless destroy A's Asp in 6 seconds.

At the moment, B can pre-emptively interdict and open fire on C to protect A. Even if it all goes wrong and C is an excellent PvPer, B is only going to be down a rebuy, and it'll take long enough that the explorer will be safe, which is the important thing.

Under your proposals, B cannot open fire on C - not without a 150 million credit bounty, and attracting a bunch of player bounty hunters which will make the rest of the escort mission really difficult! - until they have already murdered A. It'll be tough finding escort pilots who are willing to entertain that possibility, or explorers who will accept "escort contract void in case of attack by Clean Ganker", and yet another existing reason for both lawful PvP and inter-player cooperation goes away.

(C doesn't care that their ganker account has attracted a 26 million bounty from killing A - their alt will kill them to get most of the money back for the Vulture, and then C will be reset for the next go round)


Your proposal doesn't distinguish any reasons between "wanted player attacking clean player" - it's all "extremely wrong and should basically be banned". Which is basically unsustainable for allowing any meaningful player PvP at all except this separate (easily exploitable) duelling board.



Also... why under these scenarios should BGSing in Open (outside of an Anarchy system, at least?) attract any sort of bonus whatsoever? Your BGS opponents may be able to see what you're doing, but their ability to stop you will be restricted to sitting on as many landing pads as possible at the station and hoping you can't dock: very feasible at an outpost-only system, bit awkward for a Coriolis... - actually attacking you will hurt them way more than it hurts you! You can't both say "killing clean players should be basically impossible, at least not more than once, because of the super-ATR security and giant bounties" and "Open is really dangerous so you should get a giant bonus just for logging into it even if you only actually get attacked about once every six months [1]".

[1] I only actually get attacked once every six months as it is, because contrary to popular belief, Open is not a giant continuous gankfest outside about three systems.

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

It says


At no point does your proposal say anything about clean players not getting notoriety for killing a murderer. How would it distinguish between the two? Is wanted status taken into account, or is it just based on notoriety. So I'm afraid you didn't state these "facts", and once again my being a moderator has nothing to do with anything.

Ok since common sense reading of the proposal can not be assumed, as you have so ably demonstrated, I have modified the post to EXPLICITLY state this. Thanks.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

• If a clean player uses a shield regeneration tool, repair limpet, refuel limpet, or other helpful modules on a target wanted in the current jurisdiction an “aiding and abetting” bounty should be placed on them to make them a legal target. This would prevent forcing players to either make themselves wanted to stop the healer or forcing them to leave an engagement that they could otherwise best their opponents.

What if they just use their ship as ablative armour - bonus points I guess for doing this in an unshielded Sidewinder - and fly in-between the clean and wanted players?

 

[Arsen Cross]

What if they just use their ship as ablative armour - bonus points I guess for doing this in an unshielded Sidewinder - and fly in-between the clean and wanted players?

That's an ancient and unfortunately unsolvable issue. The only way you could realistically solve it is if you made a wanted persons wing members legal targets if being attacked by the wanted person. However if you do this then that opens up newbies to being "wing baited" by a criminal who adds the newby so a clean ganker can smack them around. Even if you do fix it like this and accept that once it happens to someone once they'll be more careful of who they wing with (since crimes for friendly fire is already a non-issue in wings) you would still have the issue that being "ablative armor" in pvp is still an issue... Even though I'd argue that in actual combat it's a non-issue. If you lack weapons control in combat and fire on someone meddling between two people in a fight that's on you.

If your response is facetious I would recommend dropping the line of inquiry as I think this issue deserves true, respectful discussion and not jokes and sarcasm. It's a long standing issue that deserves to be actually addressed and it's been years since I've spoken on the topic because "naysayers" come in and derail it with jokes, sarcasm, trolling etc.

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

You are missing a distinction here. The system does distinguish between the two. Nothing in this system stops lawless, wanted commanders/murderers from claiming bounties on other players.

This system places commanders who commit murder into the ranking system to keep them in open, make them a valid target but the murderer status prevents them from claiming the tiered reward; while they retain the ability to kill anyone in the ranking system without additional penalty. They also would still be able to claim bounties on others like any other CMDR.

I think you are missing that separation. Think of the ranking system as separate, like pledging to powerplay. Just like powerplay it makes you a legal target to other powerplay pledges and bypasses the C&P system entirely when shooting each other. A true, Free For All pvp system which the pvp community currently attempts to emulate by socially pressuring each other to run crimes off.

Many PVP'ers (and myself) have wanted an indicator of when someone has crimes on or off. The ranking system here with its own indicator for that would bypass the need to make that change; leave the entire existing C&P system intact as-is and give the pvp'ers a means to identify willing participants easily and rank against each other.


The increased penalties for murdering people not 'pledged' to this proposed ranking system is meant as a deterrent to simple wanton killing for no reason; but in no way prevents it from happening. The existing bounty system would remain 100% intact and be unchanged. This system would be a layer on top of it; the PIlots Federation applying bounties on people who murder other members of the pilots Federation while providing an out for the crazies that want to murder each other.


The most important part of this system to me, in addition to all the above is by putting murderers into the system forcibly until their pvp bounty has been claimed - you ensure that they can't log out of open and play in solo. I have many gankers on my friends list so that I can get instanced with them because I like it when they try to kill me but have zero interest in their terrible social habits or committing pointless murders myself. Basically if I want those adrenaline rushes it's the best way to make sure I get instanced with them and get it.

The point though is that because of having those gankers on my friends list; I have years of journal data (and netlog data that predates the journal) outlining all the most prominent gankers going into solo/pg to avoid bounty hunters while grinding for their progression. An act that quite frankly disgusts me at the highest level. People who abuse the solo mode to avoid the social consequences of their actions to progress while coming into Open to force their will upon those who are simply minding their own business, only to hide again to grind without reprisal from bounty hunters.

Because of these lawless murderers only coming into open to gank you have a situation where bounty hunting is literally a near-useless dead end mechanic. Worthless 2m rewards for kills against seasoned murderers in maxed out meta engineered vessels hardly reflects the risk involved. Being forced to sacrifice survival ability to equip Kill Warrant Scanners to ensure they are actually punished for their crimes is a drastic gimping.

Personally I hated the rank system at first until I really stopped to analyze the effects. The truth of it is that it would have zero affect on the average player. The only people it would affect are those who opt into it or are thrown into it for murdering other players.

As for the other parts of this proposal...

• I could care less for adding/changing the way space is defined and think the OUTER RIM bit is meh.
• I do want the System Authority responses to be harsher and faster in high security space for PvP.
• I do want the security rating of a system to make it feel more or less dangerous appropriately.
• I want those who murder other players to be forced to risk facing consequences of their actions by the hands of another player. If you force someone to play your way; you should be made to risk being forced in the same way by someone else.

Changes I personally want for ATR...

• System authority should be assumed to be armed with the local systems emplaced defense networks sensor/satellites etc.
• 
  
• System authority should enter the instance with complete awareness of all ships in the instance and with complete scan data for all ships to correct the existing issue that they show up now and scan everyone in sequence and you are left to luck on whether they identify the perpetrator in a timely manner.
• 
  
• Spawn System Authority NPC’s summoned by a criminal action, directly on top of the criminal as if the System Authority wing dropped on them.
• 
  
• Each criminal that commits a crime against another player should have their own spawn of system authority that is dedicated to targeting them.
  ATR should be first-wave response on all PVP crimes in high security space.

Remote Assisting Wanted Players

• If a clean player uses a shield regeneration tool, repair limpet, refuel limpet, or other helpful modules on a target wanted in the current jurisdiction an “aiding and abetting” bounty should be placed on them to make them a legal target. This would prevent forcing players to either make themselves wanted to stop the healer or forcing them to leave an engagement that they could otherwise best their opponents.

Good stuff

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

That's an ancient and unfortunately unsolvable issue. The only way you could realistically solve it is if you made a wanted persons wing members legal targets if being attacked by the wanted person. However if you do this then that opens up newbies to being "wing baited" by a criminal who adds the newby so a clean ganker can smack them around. Even if you do fix it like this and accept that once it happens to someone once they'll be more careful of who they wing with (since crimes for friendly fire is already a non-issue in wings) you would still have the issue that being "ablative armor" in pvp is still an issue... Even though I'd argue that in actual combat it's a non-issue. If you lack weapons control in combat and fire on someone meddling between two people in a fight that's on you.

If your response is facetious I would recommend dropping the line of inquiry as I think this issue deserves true, respectful discussion and not jokes and sarcasm. It's a long standing issue that deserves to be actually addressed and it's been years since I've spoken on the topic because "naysayers" come in and derail it with jokes, sarcasm, trolling etc.

We must avoid the pitfall some seem to dwell in of letting the PERFECT be the enemy of the good lest we simply never make things better in a fit of analysis paralysis.