Yes PVP is unfair.

[GluttonyFang]

Exaclty, and that is in my opinion a far bigger problem than any system or security or NPC interferance when it comes to PVP, for the larger part PVP is OK.

But the griefing and complaining, in my opinion, is due to the major lack of communication. If someone has a bounty, they know their fair game, its when you read about people being camped, or losing X months \ years of gameplay, its viable, its possible, but why on earth would one consider that fair game. It is just forced upon bad behaviour that is not even interaction with a player more than "oh someone is placing their weaponry" upon me.

And it should be a fear of open play, it should make open play thrilling, but the lack of purpose takes the thrill away, and scares people to other modes. and with good reason sadly. Those who do enjoy a good round of proper PVP and there are many, would likely agree, or?

PvP include all sort of interaction, and different people seek different kind of interaction. So it is indeed a selective mode where it filters out those that have low tolerance/patience/adaptability or just those not interested in PvP of any kind. I see this as just another environment, not something unnatural nor unfair.

 

[smiths121]

Interesting and quite civilised debate.

FD freely admitted the mode system was a simple solution to allow different sorts of players to play the game back in the dark days of the DDF!
Whilst we have different modes of play someone who wishes to avoid PvP - of any sort would or should naturally gravitate to a private group or solo. No amount of fiddling with game balance would or should alter this. I play in Open as I like the idea of meeting other players, and competing with them and I am always very fond of trying to max out a ship to meet my short term objectives and survive when I know there are players around with competing objectives. I am a huge fan of Type-6 in open!

In terms of ideas in this thread:

The original post:
Stopping scans in SC does not punish the player "roleplaying a psychopath" he is looking at the type of ship unless you are saying nothing given away, how would I find my assasination target?. It punishes pirates and bounty Hunters (the latter especially). Pirates have it rough already, PvP Bounty Hunters are pretty much non-existent as the risk of hunting a player is way worst than farming NPCs at various Haz sites in any mode. The later could do with a nerf. I would probably add missions to assassinate players on the top 5 bounties list currently in open and give their location.

Increasing the penalties for attacking other player ships - well attacking I would say "no" just makes the pirates life harder - the pirate wants cargo and probably needs to get shields down and attack modules to do this. Its not exactly a career choice for the millionaire - bet they all trade to fund the lifestyle already! Treating murder of players different to NPCs, well once I get to a million I just get into a Sidey and have my mate kill me. He then gives me back some goods or something - share the bounty.

Cargo Insurance - well risk/reward may be unbalanced for traders - not sure this is the best way as it is too far the other way with risk completely removed. Should you be able to insure rare cargo? Mission specific cargo etc. It would not stop the pirates or those rolelpaying a "psycho". It would just make pirate's job harder as players would not give up cargo at all, I think it would probably end up with more PC trader deaths.

Making insurance null and void on a PC that shoot another player for 24 hours. Is this not just moving the risk for the trader to pirate? I think it would make Sunday afternoon a very dangerous time though "off to work tomorrow, getting home at 6pm - so if I spend 2 hours killing people between 4 and 6.....", then watch the news.... jump to another system and do some rare runs.....

Forcing Murderers to Anarchy - well me, if I was a pirate I would just change all the systems I want to pirate in to Anarchy, was I the only one that laughed when this happened to the starting system?

Making the difference between security levels more explicit should come with reduced reward for the trade. The good trader (or one using tools) can always find a high to high trade route, perhaps via some low security - that is fun. It does help the trade players know where there is risk. There are differences now, but it is quite subtle and as much dependent on your reputation with the controlling faction. It does suffer the same drawback as forcing murderers to Anarchy - just use the BGS to change target systems to anarchy.

I go back to even if the balance was changed why would the 400Mcr+ PvP player roleplaying a "Psychopath" care? They're roleplaying a Psychopath, they would not be doing a good job if they cared about risk/reward - heck a lot of them did not like the 1MCr cap, and used to love it when BH came after them - in those days they had to put you on their friends list to get the same instance lol.

If you want player interaction without conflict (where I define conflict as objectives that compete) then Morbus already does this.

I chatted to a Type-9 trying to encourage the player to "trade somewhere else" as we are trying to lower the influence in that system and a Type-9 can do considerable harm to that objective. I could have shot him - there is an in game reason, or I could have given him trading tips and asked him to go somewhere else. This is a PvP encounter by the way, not all require guns to solve.

Did you know traders affect my game and objectives more than "psycho" cmdrs, pirates, player groups and everything else that is "bad" in open. I think traders forget that they affect other people's games as well. Its nice to find one in Open so I can get them to change their behavior. Removing all their risk or casting me as a criminal if I have to use force is a bit one sided.

Simon

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

So pirates now have to interdict every possible trading ship? Which can potentially induce more frustration?

yes, that way they can not pick the cherries and have to go into the risk to intercept a combat outfitted ship as well.

As long as people are fine with having their profits reduced in these so-called "safe systems," otherwise it's just a shameless request to make the game easier.

looks more like you want to keep it easy for the pirates, by luring traders into unsafe terrain. Of course safe systems is where the traders highest profit should be, because usually economy is strong in those. or at elats if the game would have deeper emchanics, some goods like wepaons and mines should have very high prices in unsafe regions, so trades would like to sell them there. While safe Systems offe higher prices for food and tech. Unsafe systems is where the fishy stuff should be highly proficent, smuggling and such. If the pirate wants the rewarding prey he should go to the safe locations. Or deal with the other smugglers for their cargo. Pirates should not be common, because they are at the end of a food chain.

 

[CMDR DAVID187]

Dons asbestos suit.. (Note that I'm not actually against PVP, I quite enjoy it) but it's currently unbalanced.

We have crime but no punishment.

The victims of the crime are punished.. traders lose their whole inventory + insurance every time they are destroyed, however the attacker has a bare minimal slap on the wrist.

So the victims run or combat log. Reporting people that combat log does not help, because they will get told off once and then

• Go to Solo
• Go to Mobius

This means that there are less people for the PVP'ers to attack. So they go off and kill newbies in sidewinders or just get bored.

Wings made things worse because now a trade anaconda that *might* have had a chance to fight back against a single player, is instead being attacked by wings of 3 players.

The victims in the trade ships see this as griefing because they are being attacked and losing (up to) everything they own, while they know that the attacker is risking nothing.

I think that if PVP was made to be riskier it would actually be more fun for the attacker. If traders knew that the law was on their side it might bring more of them back to open. HOWEVER it would need big changes. Big fines for PVP, big bounties and immediate and escalating police response to ships being attacked. This results in more difficult fights, more risk, more reward. Make the police response relative to the system politics etc, so that core empire systems have more police than independent anarchy systems, completely empty systems have no police. Increase the trading reward for going into more dangerous systems.

As I'm writing this I'm realising that as you try to fix a single point it leads on to more points that are broken, that need more fixes to fix up the core gameplay that lead to dead ends in the core gameplay that cannot be fixed due to the way the game is written. If you increase the rewards in anarchy systems so more PVPers go into the system to catch the traders then the traders that are in solo have an unfair advantage, unless you have more NPC pirates. All of this is broken because the bigger ships can just submit, boost away and jump (especially from the npc's)

To be honest I dont think this can be fixed without a complete overhaul of everything from the ground up with input from the players. But for now, The PVP balance is so far on the attacker's side that there is no reason to participate in it.

Maybe some of this would help...

• Remove ship scans from supercruise so that players cant tell if they are attacking a combat-conda from a trade-conda.
• Increase the penalties for attacking other player ships
• Allow traders to insure their cargo?
• Quick (NPC Viper System Authority?) Response to attacked ships. (Variable. Sometimes quick, sometimes longer.. )
• Make insurance null and void on ships that attack in PVP. (and are reported.. say for 24 hours).

I know this *seems* like nerfs to PVP, but if the sides are balanced then more people might participate..

What about just stop the crying and let's keep the game dangerous. Or maybe we could have animated pilots who wave at each other out of the cockpit window when the trader flys past the pvp fer de Lance!!!

 

[Charles Erika von Hackbeil]

What about just stop the crying and let's keep the game dangerous. Or maybe we could have animated pilots who wave at each other out of the cockpit window when the trader flys past the pvp fer de Lance!!!

Your constructive argument adds real depth to this discussion. Thanks for your contribution.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'll just throw in a random suggestion here.

What we have when an NPC illegally attacks an NPC, or a PC illegally attacks an NPC, is that sooner or later the cops turn up (depending on the system and security etc).

Now, this can also happen in PvP situations if people have report crimes against me turned on (pirates generally don't report their own crimes), but the solution to PvP crime isn't best handled with a PvE system for response. Its for a PvP response. A good PvPer will simply run from the NPCs if outnumbered or blow them to bits and continue with their actions.

But what i'm thinking might work even better.

We have all seen what the fuel rats are capable of. Why haven't the bounty hunting PvPers done something similar? Someone is attacked and killed by another player. Call for the Bounty Wolves! Hop onto their IRC channel, give information, and one of the bounty hunters online (or a wing of them) responds.

No need for players to offer rewards. The game will give anyway for the kill of the wanted player. And the main reward will be the chance for some PvP with someone who on the surface seems to be wanting PvP. (unless they are just a filthy ganker who will combat log as soon as anyone with a big ship turns up )

 

[sewerratuk]

I'll just throw in a random suggestion here.

What we have when an NPC illegally attacks an NPC, or a PC illegally attacks an NPC, is that sooner or later the cops turn up (depending on the system and security etc).

Now, this can also happen in PvP situations if people have report crimes against me turned on (pirates generally don't report their own crimes), but the solution to PvP crime isn't best handled with a PvE system for response. Its for a PvP response. A good PvPer will simply run from the NPCs if outnumbered or blow them to bits and continue with their actions.

But what i'm thinking might work even better.

We have all seen what the fuel rats are capable of. Why haven't the bounty hunting PvPers done something similar? Someone is attacked and killed by another player. Call for the Bounty Wolves! Hop onto their IRC channel, give information, and one of the bounty hunters online (or a wing of them) responds.

No need for players to offer rewards. The game will give anyway for the kill of the wanted player. And the main reward will be the chance for some PvP with someone who on the surface seems to be wanting PvP. (unless they are just a filthy ganker who will combat log as soon as anyone with a big ship turns up )

This,
I don't understand people who say there is no punishment for PvP pirates, etc. Have you looked at the Top 5 in stations, there are some massive bounties on CMDR's. Just needs BH's with the balls to go fight them

 

[Muetdhiver]

Have you tried to hunt such players ?

you have to consider that :

1) they might be in solo
2) if they are not, you still have to find/track/hunt them, which might be very hard due to instancing.
3) After all that, you collect 1M credits at most, and that is upon them being willing to fight (otherwise, since they are in combat fitted ships, escape is always possible).

 

[Majinvash]

This,
I don't understand people who say there is no punishment for PvP pirates, etc. Have you looked at the Top 5 in stations, there are some massive bounties on CMDR's. Just needs BH's with the balls to go fight them

All pointless, as FD has left in Game Breaking issues that allow anyone to escape, anything, at any time.

There is literally ZERO risk to any player who knows what they are doing in this game ( And im talking about being in Open )

Literally all you need is a ship that can travel in a straight line and soak up sustained fire for 20 seconds.

GG FD

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

…
We have all seen what the fuel rats are capable of. Why haven't the bounty hunting PvPers done something similar? Someone is attacked and killed by another player. Call for the Bounty Wolves! …

Obviously there is something that prevents this for happening, otherwise such a group would have formed long ago.

My bet is that there simply isn't any motivation to do something like that.
Why would a PvP player so something like that if that player can PvP without such a group? What would be the advantage of doing something like that? Why attacking potentially dangerous targets if there are much easier targets? Why attack pirates if being a pirate is much more satisfactory?

There are protective groups out there, but there are simply not enough players who want to do something like that.

This,
I don't understand people who say there is no punishment for PvP pirates, etc. Have you looked at the Top 5 in stations, there are some massive bounties on CMDR's. Just needs BH's with the balls to go fight them

Bounty hunting is completely broken in this game. KWS need absurdly high amounts of energy, take ages to scan, get easily interrupted by chaff. Why bother with it if just killing a player is much easier and the same fun?

(Disclaimer: I don't enjoy piracy and I don't enjoy randomly killing other CMDRs)

 

[Drunk Si]

I'll just throw in a random suggestion here.

What we have when an NPC illegally attacks an NPC, or a PC illegally attacks an NPC, is that sooner or later the cops turn up (depending on the system and security etc).

Now, this can also happen in PvP situations if people have report crimes against me turned on (pirates generally don't report their own crimes), but the solution to PvP crime isn't best handled with a PvE system for response. Its for a PvP response. A good PvPer will simply run from the NPCs if outnumbered or blow them to bits and continue with their actions.

But what i'm thinking might work even better.

We have all seen what the fuel rats are capable of. Why haven't the bounty hunting PvPers done something similar? Someone is attacked and killed by another player. Call for the Bounty Wolves! Hop onto their IRC channel, give information, and one of the bounty hunters online (or a wing of them) responds.

No need for players to offer rewards. The game will give anyway for the kill of the wanted player. And the main reward will be the chance for some PvP with someone who on the surface seems to be wanting PvP. (unless they are just a filthy ganker who will combat log as soon as anyone with a big ship turns up )

I suppose it's easier for the fuel rats to find a stationary individual that wants to be found and saved, who will coordinate with them and make sure they're online at the same time, than it is to track down a specific target who can jump around or log off. The "top bounties" list is nowhere near good enough a tool to make PvP bounty hunting viable. More robust tools for tracking cmdrs are needed. If we ever get such tools and the crime and punishment system is reworked so that these guys get large, tempting, bounties, then you would see a damn sight more PvP bounty hunting.

 

[Mitore]

Simply let players have 0 rebuy cost for ship (cargo lost is still valuable enough).
Player that kills other player will get bounty worth of cargo destroyed + visible up to 20LY for anyone and will be put in matchmaking sever with bounty hunter no matter if he plays solo/group/open. You can't hide now!

Now we need some motivation for attacker. I guess pirating is enough? Need some more thought.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Why not add the following features :

If you get killed by a CMDR, in the rebuy screen add an option "pay to track CMDR".
For like 100K, you get position info of the CMDR (as you would for a friend) on the map and
get instanced with him as per a friend/wing mate. It only lasts for 1-2 weeks, or till you kill
your target.

In stations, Under contacts, add a similar option for top 5 bounties, and make the top 5 bounties
only display CMDR's that are in open at the moment.

While not perfect, that would be quite helpfull.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well, I think after looking at the responses to my last post things are a lot clearer about the attitude of PvPers.

Thanks for clearing that up guys. I had my suspicions, but good (or bad) to see them confirmed.

To everyone else, there's a party in Mobius, free Tea for everyone.

I'm out.

 

[rajziel]

Your analogy of crimes & punishments in Open is all wrong on so many levels. As long as players have the choice to play in non-pvp modes i.e Solo, Mobius or other private networks then what happens in Open mode is irrelevant. Open is like the 'Wild West', it's lawless, it's harsh, it's unfair to it's so called 'victims', but that is *exactly* what playing in Open is all about.

If players choose to play in Open then they are NOT victims if they are later killed/murdered in this environment, they chose to play in this environment knowing these risks *exist* and are very high when compared to other modes that are available to them.

If Open becomes a 'ghost town' (which it won't and never will be) then a natural hearding effect of players will take place over time where they will seek alternative environments that better suits their gameplay.

Where is the official announcement saying that?

 

[GluttonyFang]

yes, that way they can not pick the cherries and have to go into the risk to intercept a combat outfitted ship as well.

It just makes people complain about interdiction even more and create frustration on both sides, both predator and prey.

looks more like you want to keep it easy for the pirates, by luring traders into unsafe terrain. Of course safe systems is where the traders highest profit should be, because usually economy is strong in those. or at elats if the game would have deeper emchanics, some goods like wepaons and mines should have very high prices in unsafe regions, so trades would like to sell them there. While safe Systems offe higher prices for food and tech. Unsafe systems is where the fishy stuff should be highly proficent, smuggling and such. If the pirate wants the rewarding prey he should go to the safe locations. Or deal with the other smugglers for their cargo. Pirates should not be common, because they are at the end of a food chain.

Are you kidding me? Do you know how easy trading is compared to proper piracy and the amount respective profession earn despite their difficulty? High-sec system's profit should be low because everyone wants to be protected, thus causing too much supply and not enough demand to keep the price up.

Pirates aren't common as it is, and creating more obstacle for pirates without proper rewards is calling for pirates' extinction.

Have you done piracy? If so how extensively/often?

 

[Mr_sukebe]

I've voiced my opinion on piracy and murder within the Suggestions forum regarding anti-piracy.

Ref combat logging. If it's against and NPC, then frankly, who cares.
However, I get the point about how annoying it can be against another player. So how about a very simple idea. You combat log when engaged within 5km by another player, and that triggers a lock that ONLY allows you into solo play for 24 hours. So it's not stopping you play, but IS stopping the player repeatedly annoying other real players.
If that were introduced, I'm sure it would be a good incentive.

 

[Mitore]

Piracy is least paid profession in the game, but most interresting. Then there are griefers/kids. Last but not least, inconsistent game breaking design. Still i bought nice tech demo which i like to fly around and do pointless stuff.
It's like a nice real life simulator, no matter what you do you will most likely accomplish nothing except get credits to your account. People who say just use your imagination: i have really good imagination and i use it when i don't have computer access and i make hellova nice space adventures in my head, but that's not why i play elite. My imagination is full package and does not require anything to work. I want elite to provide full content itself.

 

[_Dastardly_]

yes, that way they can not pick the cherries and have to go into the risk to intercept a combat outfitted ship as well.





looks more like you want to keep it easy for the pirates, by luring traders into unsafe terrain. Of course safe systems is where the traders highest profit should be, because usually economy is strong in those. or at elats if the game would have deeper emchanics, some goods like wepaons and mines should have very high prices in unsafe regions, so trades would like to sell them there. While safe Systems offe higher prices for food and tech. Unsafe systems is where the fishy stuff should be highly proficent, smuggling and such. If the pirate wants the rewarding prey he should go to the safe locations. Or deal with the other smugglers for their cargo. Pirates should not be common, because they are at the end of a food chain.

It just makes people complain about interdiction even more and create frustration on both sides, both predator and prey.

Thats a very sweeping statement with little reasoning to back it up. Feel free to improve on your answer

Are you kidding me? Do you know how easy trading is compared to proper piracy and the amount respective profession earn despite their difficulty? High-sec system's profit should be low because everyone wants to be protected, thus causing too much supply and not enough demand to keep the price up.

Pirates aren't common as it is, and creating more obstacle for pirates without proper rewards is calling for pirates' extinction.

Have you done piracy? If so how extensively/often?

We mentioned asking for credentials before in this thread I believe and how it does not help your cause.

Trading is boring, but so is killing unarmed traders. PVP vs a skilled opponent is a fine art and highly complex. There's no single solution, trading would become more interesting and vital if the market was less homogenised. Everything is flat everywhere, (small variances but nothing of import). Create some high profit in dangerous areas and you will get traders willing to aim for that profit, creating targets for the PVP'ers. Sure some will stay watching netflix in safe space but that should be their choice.

 

[GluttonyFang]

Thats a very sweeping statement with little reasoning to back it up. Feel free to improve on your answer

And this is why I asked if people know what they are commenting on.

Any experienced pirate can will tell people that the only ship worth interdicting are T6/T7/T9/Python/Anaconda/Cutter, thus even without scanning capability, it's not going to affect much of what people interdict. Not to mention that the probability of multiple of these ships arriving at the same system is very very low.

This is just going to give people that PK for fun more reason to interdict people and cause more complaints.

We mentioned asking for credentials before in this thread I believe and how it does not help your cause.

It's not about helping anyone's case but making sure the quality of the debate is preserved. No one wants to argue with someone who is making unsubstantiated claims out of convenience and ignorance, it's wasting both parties' time.

Trading is boring, but so is killing unarmed traders. PVP vs a skilled opponent is a fine art and highly complex. There's no single solution, trading would become more interesting and vital if the market was less homogenised. Everything is flat everywhere, (small variances but nothing of import). Create some high profit in dangerous areas and you will get traders willing to aim for that profit, creating targets for the PVP'ers. Sure some will stay watching netflix in safe space but that should be their choice.

Being bored has nothing to do with where this portion of discussion began with. It's about proper balancing of high-sec profit and low-sec profit.

Staying in safe space is fine, but profit is definitely going to be substantially less than dangerous space, which I already explained. It's the idea of steady low income and risky high income.