Crime and Punishment not fit for purpose - needs overhauling

[Screemonster]

I read a CMDR's story on Reddit recently.

They were out exploring. When they were finished they went off to sell the exploration data like everyone else. They stayed in open and were ganked on their way back. Story as old as time in this game.

Why were they in open in the first place? Because their buddy explores and sometimes they like race back to the station to see who can sell their data first. Obviously since it's a race they want to be able to see each other at the station.

imo the problem here is the decision in the early days of the game's development that dying should "have consequences" - such as losing all your exploration data.

The greatest gank in the history of the game and it happened before anyone even logged in.

As I said earlier though - C&P can't un-gank that guy. The guy's been ganked, his exploration data is gone, no matter what is done to the ganker after the fact.

 

[bangermsuk]

As someone who's experienced every side of the Elite Dangerous galaxy - PVP, PVE, and everything in between - I've had countless discussions about the Crime and Punishment system. Saying that, everything below is my opinion only. One thing to note very clearly - this thread is NOT a discussion about Open vs Solo. If you want to discuss that, please do it here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-open-v-solo-v-groups-thread.607291/

This thread is about the current Crime and Punishment system in Elite Dangerous - mainly in the context of PVP - so if we could stick to that topic and context it would be good. With that short intro out of the way - let's have a look at it.

CRIME AND PUNIHSMENT

Currently the main drivers behind the Crime and Punishment systems are: Fines, Bounties and Notoriety. I won't be talking about fines, they are more or less meaningless.

The players that choose the more serious criminal path get assigned bounties and notoriety. As an effect, the two main "punishments" for crimes seems to be effectively:

• Financial implications - the criminals that destroy other players' ships have to pay a percentage of their victims' rebuy costs.
• Gameplay implications - the inability to use station systems like refuel, rearm and repair until you pay off the bounties (which is not possible unless your Notoriety is 0)

None of these 2 things are fit for purpose in the current game reality.

• Credits are ridiculously easy to get, so the victims' rebuy cost addition is 100% non-punishment, as you can get that money back in a couple of hours tops.
• With the addition of Fleet Carriers and also a gazillion of Odyssey settlements that offer the services - the inability to use the services on the main station(s) is also not a problem at all.

This is why I am of an opinion that the whole system needs revisiting and restructuring to fit the current game reality better. Another reason is that while some players enjoy the thrill of piracy and combat, the balance currently swings too far in favour of gankers/criminals at the expense of traders, explorers and other "victims".

Let's have a look at a typical trading Community Goal scenario. Considering I am a trader that wants to compete in a community goal to get the prizes for top tier of players I am on a lost position from the get-go.

I have a choice - sacrifice some of my cargo space to get more armour and bigger shields to increase my survivability. This means that competing in the CG immediately becomes a lost cause, as the people who fly in Solo can easily go for min-maxed shieldless, defenceless all-cargo-rack builds, which means they will be able to haul A LOT more and win the CG.

And even if I somehow manage to be able to compete with them, the chain-interdictions from people that want to prevent me from delivering that cargo mean that I have literally no chance. It is almost impossible to escape an interdiction from a maxxed out PVP gank-boat in my heavy trader loaded up with armour and cargo. The only viable option is to submit. But when I do that - I'm getting pulled back to the attacker's position. Meaning that if I manage to outmanoeuvre them and get back into Super Cruise, now I have to cover the distance to the station again. This makes it extremely easy for another interdiction, and even if I mange to submit and get back into SC a few times in a row, I keep getting chain-interdicted and after 5th - 6th time it becomes just an annoyance.

It feels like I'm being punished for being a better pilot than my attackers.

You could say - oh but they get bounties on their heads, so maybe get other players to hunt them down. Unfortunately, the player bounties are capped at 2 million, so even if they have a 100 mil bounty on them, once a player bounty hunter destroys them, they only get 2 million. This is extremely discouraging to player BH, just a waste of time really considering that you can make MUCH MORE just by doing PVE BH.

This cap was introduced long time ago, when Credits were not as easy to make (quite the opposite in fact), and the players would deliberately get large bounties and them let their friend destroy them to get rich quick. Again, due to easy way to make billions nowadays, this cap is 100% obsolete and not needed anymore.

Also related to that is the fact that I can't really reward my friendly bounty hunters for helping me out and being my bodyguards. What do they get out of it? I potentially get a better chance of competing in the Community Goal, but what's in it for them? 2 million Cr per ganker kill. LOL.

These are the prime examples of how the game favours the aggressor rather than the victim, how it discourages player bounty hunting and how it makes the punishment rather meaningless.

PROPOSED CHANGES

What could be done to make it a bit better? Below are some of the proposals we came up together (remember I said it's been discussed with a lot of people, some of which were also gankers!)

• Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!
• Increase player bounties greatly. With the cap removed, make it actually worthwhile for the player bounty hunters to engage with Wanted players.
• Make escaping player interdictions easier.
• Make the aggressor being pulled to the victim after the successful and/or submitted interdiction, rather than the other way around. This will mean that the reward for my better piloting skills is the better chance to get to my destination if I manage to escape back into Super Cruise.
• Multiply the victims' rebuy cost being added to the criminal's rebuy after they destroy a ship. Make it scalable with the current Credits value in the economy.
• From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules. Alternatively make them retrieveable after specific amount of time only (24/48 hours?)
• Increase the police response in High and Medium Security systems. Low Sec and Anarchy should be fairly safe for criminals, but Med and High should really make them think twice before they decide to destroy another player's ship.
• Introduce more reasons to be a criminal that don't involve mindless ganking.

All in all, I think it is fair to say the C&P is no longer fit for purpose and even if you disagree with some of the proposals above, it definitely requires another look and changes to fit the current game reality better.

Lastly - a polite reminder that it's just my opinion and it's OK to have a different one. Also, keep it civil and if you want to discuss Open vs Solo - go to the thread linked at the top of this post.

So - what do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

it like real life crime rates then but srsly....


the fines are not too bad, but i think they could do we some sorta rehaul.
I do agree with the supercruise indictions thou, it too one Way atm, if your in a hauler or even a t9/python/anaconda it is always nearly impossible to get out of interdiction without

@Screemonster it the same with mining, watch one on youtube the other day with an annaconde vs python great to watch, but the annaconda one the day ( miner) and the python was taking very little damage from fighter wings (team mates)
The SCo Drive on. so it could be possible for the indictor been indicted them self by system authorities ships on high security systems to interevene.

 

[Darrack]

Mobias was simple to join a few years ago, I have no idea if it has changed now.

I joined three months ago, best thing i ever did in ED, emailed the link, answered some questions and got an invite within a week.
Its great now meeting folks at material farming spots knowing they aint going to be muppets and gank my T7 whilst I'm in the SRV.

O7

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

Since Elite Dangerous uses Peer to Peer, the authority about what happens in the instance is goverened by the players. These options give cheaters avenues for abuse (by either forcing a disconnect through DDOS, crashing or through other means such as confusing the server/adjudicator).

There's no incentive for abuse here though when there's a valid game mechanic (hatchbreaker) that achieves the same outcome.

 

[Rainbro]

Since Elite Dangerous uses Peer to Peer, the authority about what happens in the instance is goverened by the players. These options give cheaters avenues for abuse (by either forcing a disconnect through DDOS, crashing or through other means such as confusing the server/adjudicator).

"What if people hack the game" isn't an argument against a given game system, it's an argument for better detection and banning of cheaters. Some sort of Punishment system for their Crimes, perhaps.

 

[Dragsham]

Let's be clear. Saying pirates can be construed as gankers isn't correct at all. Piracy albeit illegal and potentially lethal, isnt what I'd term ganking.
Piracy has it's merits, seeking loot as a reason for attacking.
Ganking is literally picking on folk who are not able for whatever reason, to put up a decent fight. KNOWING that you cannot lose, that your intended victim doesn't stand a cat in hells chance vs a
gankers murder boat.
Pvp itself is fine as long as the story woven isn't of a one sided battle.
Most pvpers (not gankers) happily partake knowing not the outcome.
Crime & punishment does nothing to curtail ganking. So just focus on a remedy for solely this. Piracy & pvp need not be addressed.
I cannot bring myself to call ganking pvp. It just isn't.

 

[Brrokk]

imo the problem here is the decision in the early days of the game's development that dying should "have consequences" - such as losing all your exploration data.

The greatest gank in the history of the game and it happened before anyone even logged in.

As I said earlier though - C&P can't un-gank that guy. The guy's been ganked, his exploration data is gone, no matter what is done to the ganker after the fact.

We've had a recent change so that we don't lose combat bonds when exploded. I think FD should make exploration data persist too, for consistency.

 

[gorankar]

As PvP is optional, I don't think the crime and punishment system should revolve around it. You can almost always nope out of PvP in open unless you are in a paper ship or you have cheaters one shotting you in your Phantom with size 5 prizmatics and a couple boosters on. The other modes are generally PvP free. Got one shot today by obvious cheater, I just blocked them and will never have to deal with them again. So again, I don't think balancing for PvP in a PvP optional game is the right way to go about it.

Criminal activity should be handled better. But I am more of a mind that the system itself really only needs tweaking, and what really needs to be fixed is how capable the NPC's and their ships are. A military NPC only module to prevent high wake within 3-6KM would not be a bad thing either. If I am out doing a civilian massacre in a well engineered FDL/Krait2/Python2, ATR should be showing up in numbers in ships engineered to the same level as mine and be piloted by truly Elite NPCs that work together to get rid of me. They should have a better than average chance of killing me.

 

[angusmadmac1]

When it comes down to it the player killers don't have the Risk. All the risk is on the victim . Explorer coming back loses the data and money , trader the profits , mission runner the inf.
I also believe that if you haven't got some defences your insurance should be invalid.
If you attack ( for no reason ) in fed/ imp/alliance or PP space then you should be person non gratia in those areas. Your access to ships, engineers should be limited.
Your bounty should take into account what ever was lost and that money should go to the victim who has decent defensive capabilities.
The aggressor only gets a small slap on the wrist and ATR ( ohhh scary ( sarcastic remark)) and some limited access in that system, it's not even impounded.
They have no risk, which means they continue to do it
Please note I have said for no reason if it's PP or BGS then it's like a CZ you picked the wrong side .

 

[ꝁestrel]

Ganking would not be a problem (and its really not now, honestly when you care to learn a few tricks) if the game as a whole made more of an effort to push unlawfuls away using other things like the BGS.

Maybe.

The problem is at end game you have people with tens/hundreds of billions of credits, all the best ships fully engineered, and no interest in anything other than blowing up players. No amount of bounties or notoriety is going to hold them back. Not to mention that in Elite PvP there's almost always a way to escape if you feel like you're losing the fight. So if a ganker encounters resistance they can just dip out.

Say you pushed the gankers out into outer bubble Anarchy systems. All you'd be doing is making sure they do their grinding out there. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to lawful space for a fun night of seal clubbing.

And where did they go to sell it? This illustrates the mindset of 'anywhere at any time in anything' and it causing problems. When I was doing granular C+P testing I scouted for systems that had never seen players (at least, not for weeks on end) so I could get firm results. They exist in plentiful numbers on the fringes and with planning decrease the chances of attack. If you want to be in open with such high stakes you can't be causal about it.

You're not wrong in principle but the part about "if you want to be in open with such high stakes" is the key point of contention IMO. A lot of people don't want to play a high stakes open world MMO. High stakes are only fun if you enjoy that aspect of the game. That is to say you enjoy cat & mouse gameplay, combat mechanics, and adversarial gameplay overall.

If players are unwilling to take steps to even be able to escape, or weigh up the risk of a particular system no C+P on earth will help them.

Rinzler put out a guide for surviving a gank 7 years ago (link). Since then there have been countless video guides, text guides, etc on what to do. It's changed nothing and that's really my point. It's just the reality we live in. People who aren't into combat (for whatever reason) aren't going to bother.

It's not because people are dumb or lazy btw. It's just not the game they signed up for and there are various legit reasons why.

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ, etc establish very early on that it's a high stakes game where you'll lose your stuff constantly. And no one there complains about KoS because it's part of the game. But even in those games... Eve heavily disincentivizes high-sec ganking, Tarkov has low-level-only maps, and DayZ encourages modding so people can play on the servers with rules they like.

 

[Darrack]

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ

We certainly don't want ED to become like any of those, especially Eve.

O7

 

[ꝁestrel]

But in FE2 terms that's the wrong way to think of it: your trade profit is your reward for getting the cargo past the pirates, which is why that game doesn't need separate Trade and Combat ranks: an Elite Combat pilot is an Elite Trader if they want to be.

Let's say I'm your average trader in a Python. I'm not going to use a Cutter with prismatics as an example because that's out of reach for most players until they play the game a lot. You can replace the average Python with the average exploration Asp/DBX or whatever.

If I enter a system and get interdicted by NPC pirates I can always escape with minimal effort. I don't need chaff. I don't need to boost toward the attacker. I don't even need to submit to the interdiction so that FSD recharge time is minimal. I don't need to high-wake since the NPCs won't harass repeatedly. I do need to do something but that something is just using basic flight mechanics. The only way to die is being AFK or running a shieldless Asp with 300 armor. It's predictable. And most importantly: I can still accomplish my objective by reaching the destination and selling.

But as soon as you introduce a PvP blockade everything changes:

• Most of the time the only option is to high-wake and therefore not accomplish the objective.
• Escaping a competent ganker does take some skill. You can't just boost forward and leave.
• The attacker risks absolutely nothing and there's no practical way to make them leave the system.

That's the big difference between your FE2 example and what we're talking about here. The balance of power is completely lobsided in these PvP murderhobo/ganker/griefer/whatever encounters. The attacker risks nothing and the defender risks everything.

C+P aims to solve this problem by creating long term consequences for the attacker (they ostensibly "risk" something by gaining notoriety, for example). But in reality the "punishment" part of C+P isn't much of a punishment at all.

 

[ꝁestrel]

If you attack ( for no reason ) in fed/ imp/alliance or PP space then you should be person non gratia in those areas. Your access to ships, engineers should be limited.

Agreed but I think it needs to be more extreme.

Anything done for a mission, bounty hunt, CZ, Power Play, etc (legit PvP) is not counted. This is really important. And if players have "Report Crimes Against Me" turned off then it shouldn't count. Basically we need to allow for PvP if people are doing it willingly or have some cause for it.

Ok now let's say I do some ganking in fed/imp/alliance space. Consequences:

Banned from lawful space
I can't use services anywhere in that space. Not to rearm. Not to repair. Not even to refuel. Not even at FCs. Not even my own FC. Not at ground outposts even if they're owned by an Anarchy faction. I'm completely banned from all lawful space for some period of time. I can only use services in systems owned by a faction that's in Anarchy.

Security rams their fist in my face
High-sec should be completely unsurvivable for me. Winning interdiction mini-game is impossible. I should be attacked by ships that perma-lock my FSD and have 100,000 DPS.
Med-sec should be the same as high-sec but they show up later. Winning interdiction mini-game IS possible. If you lose the mini-game you die.
Low-sec should be the same as med-sec but they show up even later.

Huge reputation loss with lawful factions
If I do my ganking in Federation space then I lose a big chunk of reputation with them. Something like every kill would cost 1 hour of rep grinding. Reputation with local factions should instantly drop a full level for every kill. So if I decided to gank in Robigo then I'd have to rebuild my rep there again.

Black market and illegal mission payouts go WAY up
10x (or more) increase in rewards for illegal missions.
5x (or more) increase in payouts for selling illegal stuff at a black market.

Anyway there's more than can be done and fine-tuned but that's generally how I think it should work. It makes repeated ganking in high-sec systems impractical but still possible for people who really want it. If someone does get ganked they know that the attacker just completely screwed themselves for a while.

It simply wouldn't make sense (from the attacker's POV) to destroy some random shieldless Asp because they'd need to spend 1+ weeks grinding for the ability to do it again. But if they realllly didn't like that CMDR (lol) then it is what it is

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I think it’s a pity that frontier adopted such a ‘opt-in policy for pve’. Currently only AX combat requires high level skill, annd to do that you have to go to specific areas. Most players expect to fly around the inhabited bubble without really being obliged to engage in combat, even in anarchy systems or those controlled by hostile powers. Most players just don’t see jumping into an anarchy system as an ‘opt in’ to real danger, so the huge gap between the pvp and pve experience continues.

 

[Shir]

Pve vs Pvp ship ain't much of a fight really. Especially if the Pvp ships are at least two, which they often are, one hit will disable shields, second one (from the other ship) will disable drives, end of story. No numbers will help, if the Pvp players are even a bit decent it all ends in a few seconds.

 

[Frankymole]

I think it’s a pity that frontier adopted such a ‘opt-in policy for pve’. Currently only AX combat requires high level skill, annd to do that you have to go to specific areas. Most players expect to fly around the inhabited bubble without really being obliged to engage in combat, even in anarchy systems or those controlled by hostile powers. Most players just don’t see jumping into an anarchy system as an ‘opt in’ to real danger, so the huge gap between the pvp and pve experience continues.

Yes, I must admit Anarchies are a real disappointment coming to ED after the original Elite game on the BBC and Spectrum. There, Anarchy systems are something to be feared and you take your life in your hands going into or through them.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yes, I must admit Anarchies are a real disappointment coming to ED after the original Elite game on the BBC and Spectrum. There, Anarchy systems are something to be feared and you take your life in your hands going into or through them.

Only at the start. Once you had your ship well equipped they were no problem at all.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Maybe.

The problem is at end game you have people with tens/hundreds of billions of credits, all the best ships fully engineered, and no interest in anything other than blowing up players. No amount of bounties or notoriety is going to hold them back. Not to mention that in Elite PvP there's almost always a way to escape if you feel like you're losing the fight. So if a ganker encounters resistance they can just dip out.

Say you pushed the gankers out into outer bubble Anarchy systems. All you'd be doing is making sure they do their grinding out there. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to lawful space for a fun night of seal clubbing.

My point was partly from an ideal ED (as in the game is credit poor and engineering is limited) but also (I think as I said in another post) if you lock out legal money making missions you can't grind out legal money- so there would be a point where criminals would have limited choices and getting top end ships is harder.

Say you pushed the gankers out into outer bubble Anarchy systems. All you'd be doing is making sure they do their grinding out there. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to lawful space for a fun night of seal clubbing.

And? Thats up to them risking coming back- I'd also point out that they are spending less time in legal systems. You might not like how they play but its not against the rules either.

You're not wrong in principle but the part about "if you want to be in open with such high stakes" is the key point of contention IMO. A lot of people don't want to play a high stakes open world MMO. High stakes are only fun if you enjoy that aspect of the game. That is to say you enjoy cat & mouse gameplay, combat mechanics, and adversarial gameplay overall.

Then thats on them, again. They know what Open is about- if they don't want the risk then don't be in Open to begin with because you have to be cautious. Going back to my example of border systems- you don't have any cat or mouse there and the information is available (and with a bit of thinking) on INARA. Ten minutes of reading and job done.

Rinzler put out a guide for surviving a gank 7 years ago (link). Since then there have been countless video guides, text guides, etc on what to do. It's changed nothing and that's really my point. It's just the reality we live in. People who aren't into combat (for whatever reason) aren't going to bother.

It's not because people are dumb or lazy btw. It's just not the game they signed up for and there are various legit reasons why.

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ, etc establish very early on that it's a high stakes game where you'll lose your stuff constantly. And no one there complains about KoS because it's part of the game. But even in those games... Eve heavily disincentivizes high-sec ganking, Tarkov has low-level-only maps, and DayZ encourages modding so people can play on the servers with rules they like.

If they don't bother then again, its on them for not even trying in a game that frankly does not care about killing. If these guys knew the drill to escape, did some homework on least traveled systems and swapped to a more survivable ship they'd be fine. Like it or not you can't cut out the possibility of an NPC or player attacking you in ED.

 

[Rubbernuke]

But again why should we have to bother? why should we be someone else's entertainment just because they can? Again the attacker looses naff all, a trader is never going to kill them, sure its pretty easy to submit and escape but then what's the point? Its just wasting my time.
No thanks i will stay in PVE mode.

O7

Because its a game where not everyone does what you like, and that random people will do random things.

The problem is PvE is easy, and PvP much harder (at least against a skilled opponent). Do you also get annoyed at NPC interdictions? Or do you tolerate them because they are easy? The issue here is if they are too easy they are pointless and PvE players have gotten used to that.

 

[Rubbernuke]

My sheldless but heavily armored T9 has yet to be destroyed and has been interdicted a fair few times. Some people just like to be blown up I guess.

I do still believe that fdev could effectively lock notoroius players out of high sec systems, but as long as a single player gets their ship destroyed we’ll be here talking on the forums about the morals of it.

This is the other problem- over-reaction. But even then if such a system was put in, people who attack others would actually like it if it was fair and leveraged gameplay to achieve it.

I know I certainly would, and hope PP V2 does this.

but as long as a single player gets their ship destroyed we’ll be here talking on the forums about the morals

To make a C+P system that leverages gameplay by default also requires players to use gameplay to escape. If players never use the tools available then no C+P system will ever work.