Please rework Crime and Punishment

[Billaien]

Please FDev, change the C&P System
I have been doing Crimes in a far off System in order to Drop the Influence of a Faction.
(Mostly blowing up Mining Vessels and raiding Settlements)

NOTORIETY:
Forcing a Player to stay logged in because they commited a Crime is just bad.
Make Notoriety drop over time while offline at least.
And last time i got destroyed and sent to a Prison Colony, i noticed it doesnt even reset to 0 afterwards?

SYSTEM ATR:
These are just unfair.
They drop literally seconds after you pulled a Target out of Supercruise even in a Low Security System.
They can always see you, even through Silent and Cold Running. (NOTE: im piloting a Cobra Mk V)
And they have Lasers that break even the toughest Shield Generators in Seconds. Those kind of Hardpoints should be limited to Starports ONLY.
In other words, you cant fight them.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Well, murder is bad, that's meant to be the general idea there. Although you can live with it- just make sure you have a plan of where you're going to dock and hand yourself in at a station occasionally if you need to get rid of a bounty. I think I've spent about 2 months at notoriety 10 at one stage, so can attest that it is something you get used to

As for ATR, they're there exactly for the reason of slowing you down with what you're trying to do. Back before they were in the game it was too easy to drop a factions influence by murdering sys sec so they exist to at least make you have to pause what you're doing. They only appear after killing a certain number of ships though, so if you listen for the announcement, jump out of the system and then back in (ideally to repair and rearm and your shield generator will probably be toast whatever you do if they shoot you), you'll reset that counter.You might want to consider more heavy duty HRPs in your ship though as, yes, they do hurt.

 

[PilotB]

When missions require you to perform something illegal the mission should cover a portion of the recovery from that action. You do the job they clear your records. The issue I have with the illegal missions isn't so much the fines/bounties they're easy to pay or the notoriety it's that you do one mission and then you're locked out of the station until you do a side quest of going to visit a factor.

Streamline it so that I can take a mission and then take more missions. Either some mechanic to evade the global monitoring system enabled while doing the mission or the mission giver removing fines and bounties up to a point on completion. I've been fined and locked out of stations in anarchy systems because missions don't always follow the system / settlement rules.

Colonies also need prison ships I don't want to fly 200ly back before the mission was bugged and spawned me into a second system nav beacon with 15 system defence force and 1 mission target.

 

[Jmanis]

Whole of C&P and crime outright is just bad full stop.

• Notoriety should be superpower specific
• You should need notoriety to access high-value missions against that superpower. Make it something criminals don't want to wash so they continue carrying risk.
• Docking when hostile should be possible using anonymity protocols just like when wanted
• Hostile to a superpower should make you hostile everywhere (to that superpower).

... just to start the saga...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think the problem is that ultimately the mechanism is called "<type of gameplay> and Punishment".

e.g. the various exploration communities aren't always completely happy with what exploration gameplay is provided, but it's not called "Exploration and Punishment" so they are at least providing suggestions from a common baseline with them, the rest of the player base, and Frontier that doing exploration is supposed to be fun, even if whatever any individual player might find fun varies.

Back before they were in the game it was too easy to drop a factions influence by murdering sys sec so they exist to at least make you have to pause what you're doing.

Though of course (as you're fully aware, I know) "too easy" in that context is very much based around a specific interpretation of how the "BGS game" is supposed to be played and what outcomes it's supposed to have for who.

It's "too easy" to drop an Anarchy faction's influence by stacking missions against it, but there's no notoriety equivalent there where completely unrelated factions start treating you differently, or ATR equivalent where after the first few missions the pirates all start flying superships to get you to stop. It's not exactly difficult to raise a faction's influence (and therefore lower everyone else's) by a whole range of methods and there's no "Missions and Punishment" or "Bounty Hunting and Punishment" mechanism to get people to stop doing that.

And that of course all ties in to the mess Powerplay Undermining is in too.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I think the problem is that ultimately the mechanism is called "<type of gameplay> and Punishment".

e.g. the various exploration communities aren't always completely happy with what exploration gameplay is provided, but it's not called "Exploration and Punishment" so they are at least providing suggestions from a common baseline with them, the rest of the player base, and Frontier that doing exploration is supposed to be fun, even if whatever any individual player might find fun varies.


Though of course (as you're fully aware, I know) "too easy" in that context is very much based around a specific interpretation of how the "BGS game" is supposed to be played and what outcomes it's supposed to have for who.

It's "too easy" to drop an Anarchy faction's influence by stacking missions against it, but there's no notoriety equivalent there where completely unrelated factions start treating you differently, or ATR equivalent where after the first few missions the pirates all start flying superships to get you to stop. It's not exactly difficult to raise a faction's influence (and therefore lower everyone else's) by a whole range of methods and there's no "Missions and Punishment" or "Bounty Hunting and Punishment" mechanism to get people to stop doing that.

And that of course all ties in to the mess Powerplay Undermining is in too.

I should probably clarify that I meant it seemed to have been deemed too easy by FDev.

I'm certainly not saying that C&P is in a good state, especially after a couple of days after getting a 10,000 credit superpower bounty literally just for trespassing. I'm only looking at how ATR were implemented and what FDev wanted them for, which certainly is not to stop anything PvP related, given the criteria for them to attack you in the first place. So that really leaves them as a PvE measure to slow down non- mission based murders. Working as intended, based on the OP.

Balanced gameplay as a whole and looking at how we could have a structured risk reward system for criminal behaviour is a whole other matter, but I'd argue ATR should remain because at least they're part of the solution, even if it's only a lopsided and half done one at the moment. The fact that I can merrily shoot down ships owned by an anarchy faction (just not directly outside a station) and they'll still greet me as their best friend when I dock is a problem and does grate on the immersion/ realism sensibilities (that's before we look at what a realistic response from a criminal organisation to you killing even one of its members would be). However, I wouldn't want to take away something that does work and does act as some sort of risk in a game that otherwise has very little unless you intentionally play with a suboptimal loadout, assuming you're past the early game stage of course.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Balanced gameplay as a whole and looking at how we could have a structured risk reward system for criminal behaviour is a whole other matter, but I'd argue ATR should remain because at least they're part of the solution, even if it's only a lopsided and half done one at the moment.

Yes, certainly agreed that ATR (or some ATR-like escalated response to repeatedly damaging a faction, at least) is important to have - it just needs to happen for any form of damage, not merely one very narrow sort under the "And Punishment" activities, if that's what's desired as a limiting factor.

 

[PilotB]

It's the problem with partially developped one size fits all solutions. The game asks you to go do criminal stuff and then locks you out for doing what was asked.

Getting shut out for a random killing spree is for me fine. Having some consequences to illegal actions also fine but the current system wastes my time when I'm doing what the game asked me to do. I can't even do it better or smoother to reduce the impact. The risk vs reward for the activities is wrong. Punishment is certain the reward is not good compared to alternative missions.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Yes, certainly agreed that ATR (or some ATR-like escalated response to repeatedly damaging a faction, at least) is important to have - it just needs to happen for any form of damage, not merely one very narrow sort under the "And Punishment" activities, if that's what's desired as a limiting factor.

I mean, that would be a far better way to do it and I really hope that there's another look at this, because yes, there's plenty of "and punishment" but not a whole lot of reason to do the crime and limiting something just to a response to non- mission murder seems wasteful. We've both seen a whole heap of discussions about making areas genuinely safe (or genuinely dangerous) depending on whether you're a criminal or not and we even now have a designated "crime is ok" area. Personally a revisit is well overdue, certainly since the result should be a more interesting bubble.

The current mechanics are what they are however and many players have learned to work around them to get whatever objective they wanted done. ATR and notoriety are an example of this (I've forgotten how many encounters I've had and survived). I agree with changing things to make the game more interesting, but my standpoint in this discussion is that I'm against solely removing consequences for murder from lawful areas. Stuff needs adding, not taking away (or alternatively take stuff away but add something else more engaging, whatever that would be).

 

[Billaien]

Just had another encounter with System ATR... in a HAZ-RES. Literally jumping in the second i started shooting a Mining Vessel!
And their Lasers had 5k Range, while also breaking my Shield Gen.

Great Balance FDev, thanks alot for "slowing me down" in my activities.

EDIT: it was a High Rez, accidently selected the wrong one >_<

 

[BackToTheMud]

Well, murder is bad, that's meant to be the general idea there.

No, it's not. If I blow up a beluga full of passengers I won't gain more notoriety than if I blow up a sidewinder. Nor will anything in the game care if I blow up occupied escape pods.
The justice system in ED is objectively atrociously bad. It does nothing to stop anyone from doing "bad" stuff, especially when it comes to pvp, while at the same time being just annoying enough to waste your time when running missions.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

No, it's not. If I blow up a beluga full of passengers I won't gain more notoriety than if I blow up a sidewinder. Nor will anything in the game care if I blow up occupied escape pods.
The justice system in ED is objectively atrociously bad. It does nothing to stop anyone from doing "bad" stuff, especially when it comes to pvp, while at the same time being just annoying enough to waste your time when running missions.

The game rules are that you get a bounty and notoriety for blowing up a clean ship where there's a law to enforce it. That's the extent of the "murder is bad" part.

Sidewinder= one ship
Beluga= one ship
Player with 794t of cargo= one ship.

Anything else is your imagination and choices and the rest of us aren't responsible for that.

 

[BackToTheMud]

The game rules are that you get a bounty and notoriety for blowing up a clean ship where there's a law to enforce it. That's the extent of the "murder is bad" part.

Sidewinder= one ship
Beluga= one ship
Player with 794t of cargo= one ship.

Anything else is your imagination and choices and the rest of us aren't responsible for that.

Thank you for proving my point.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Thank you for proving my point.

Bounties and notoriety are a useful thing to have attached to you then? Excellent, you go have fun with that.

This is not another whine thread about your inability to build a ship or select the right mode so don't turn it into one. There's a whole specific thread for that.

 

[Rubbernuke]

ATR are easy to evade, you just have to count kills and have good trigger discipline. To make them actually a threat worth considering it should be something like this:

At notoriety 10, each full NPC / player scan spawns an ATR vessel

A half though out idea, but: If a player is at notoriety 10, they have to be very careful about being scanned by random ships, security or other players as if they are, an ATR security vessel drops in to hassle them. The handwavium being that a scan is like a sighting of you thats disseminated...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[BackToTheMud]

Bounties and notoriety are a useful thing to have attached to you then? Excellent, you go have fun with that.

This is not another whine thread about your inability to build a ship or select the right mode so don't turn it into one. There's a whole specific thread for that.

Nor is this a field, and no birds need to be scared away.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Nor is this a field, and no birds need to be scared away.

Have you anything relevant to say?

 

[Darrack]

Forcing a Player to stay logged in because they commited a Crime is just bad.
Make Notoriety drop over time while offline at least.
And last time i got destroyed and sent to a Prison Colony, i noticed it doesnt even reset to 0 afterwards?

O7

 

[DemiserofD]

I'd rather players could reduce notoriety manually, perhaps by doing search and rescue signal sources which currently have little reason to exist.

Go refuel some NPCs, improve your rep!

 

[Commander Lexibutt]

I'm all for offline decaying notoriety for crimes against NPCs

There's always this argument that the crime and punishment system needs to be tough on ganking, and sure I agree with that. But what about everything else? I think a two tier system (Crime against NPCs vs Players) for crime and punishment is a good solution because it makes crime against NPCs more viable without forcing players to sit around waiting for the "consequences" of deleting some code that was spawned in the instance when the player arrived and is deleted just as fast.

Lore wise eh maybe the pilot federation just really holds grudges and won't be willing to overlook destroying one of their own if you're not doing some work for them in the meantime (Staying logged in)

In terms of PVE all it really adds is an extra trip to Inara. if you want to massacre a settlement you go to an anarchy controlled one, if you want to steal from NPCs you go to an anarchy system. The instant tattling system is kinda lame and I wish it worked more like illegal retrieval missions in settlements, as in you're only guilty if you get caught. If there was a system authority countdown that started (Like a minute or two) the moment you start doing illegal stuff to an NPC ship, and only if you don't get outta dodge quick enough you get in trouble, it would make performing criminal actions in PVE way more fun.

I'm sure there are some people who enjoy being wanted by certain systems and they'll make themselves heard, but for me personally, the inconvenience of being on a minor faction's naughty list can be such a headache (Especially if its quite widely spanning in an area) that I don't even touch a mission if its purple and not orange, it's not worth the time of day. That's an entire lineup of missions, some with gameplay unique to illegal mission types, just dumped to the wayside.

In summary, I don't mind PVP being a soulcrushing waiting period, but I think PVE could do with some leniency. I think the immersion could take a backseat to opening up a whole new avenue of illegal gameplay that isn't just smuggling. Adding some way of dodging criminal consequences for being very fast and/or skilled as well as possibly looking into offline decaying notoriety for crimes against NPCs could be a breath of fresh air to criminal gameplay.

I think it IS a valid gameplay style, but in its current state, it isn't worth it. It makes selling ships and modules harder, locks you out of systems, makes you arbitrarily wait, for basically equal pay to legal mission(s)/anarchy gameplay