Yes PVP is unfair.

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Bumbles!

I'm interested in your opinion. Even though these penalties would only be applied in cases where there was a very clear mismatch of ability *and* a crime was committed, you think it would be a deterrent to player versus player activities.

Do you (or any other folk, feel free to respond), feel that there should be no additional penalties for lopsided encounters? That the world should remain uncaring and cold as is (don't worry folk, this isn't a trick question - there's no right or wrong answer!)?

 

[Uri]

I'm thinking, why not make insurances like real ones? Based on the ship you are using, and have a recurrent fee, even work in tiers, better insurances or worse ones, with a minimum free insurance maybe.

Just an idea.

 

[wstephenson]

And by the way: the crime system is the flight model of player interaction. It deserves investment.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Sociopaths - pirates shooting traders without declaring piracy - should be driven slowly out of legal systems. It's still good idea and it seems you are on path to implement it. Do it! That's the wa to make piracy more interesting.

Also there's no push of cost of crime on pirate - he choose to be that way. It's a cost of living. Enough said.

 

[CMDR Bloodhawk]

Hello Commander Bumbles!

I'm interested in your opinion. Even though these penalties would only be applied in cases where there was a very clear mismatch of ability *and* a crime was committed, you think it would be a deterrent to player versus player activities.

Do you (or any other folk, feel free to respond), feel that there should be no additional penalties for lopsided encounters? That the world should remain uncaring and cold as is (don't worry folk, this isn't a trick question - there's no right or wrong answer!)?

How does one even define lopsided interaction? Combat rank? This is mostly determined by NPC farming anyway, not PVP prowess. Ship? In the current meta a DBS can and does wreck ships much more expensive. Seems like a slippery slope that's set up for poor balancing with exploit potential

 

[CMDR danmac]

Some great ideas here, I'm excited to see where this ends up.

Disclaimer: I'm not a PvP guy (unless fired upon) but I'm quite happy for PvP to be a thing. Some of my most exhilerating and memorable experiences on Elite have been a result of PvP. I play entirely in Open.

ganking new players in starter systems is cutting your own throat and Frontier should stomp down on that HARD.

This guy nailed it. I agree with others who have already suggested High / Low / No sec systems - with an addition to the plot route facility of "avoid no sec systems" this could be very effective. Maybe a similar system to the way EvE has it, although I haven't played that in years.

Also for the PvPers, maybe a facility where you can easily determine if another player has the "report crimes against me" turned on or off - ie. players can agree to fight each other, and once the first shot is fired, turning it on has no effect.

Do folk think that additional, relatively severe in-game penalties for illegal ship destruction where there was a large disparity between rank/power of murderer to victim would be a worthwhile thing?

Continued offences of this nature increase and prolong the punitive measures.

Absolutely. Cruising around Eravate rolling over noobs in Sidewinders is just not sporting, and anyone engaging in such behavior should be automatically tortured. Personally I have a low tolerance for "non-consensual" PvP and general trolling.

Also a "police scanner" as mentioned above would be a great addition, as a game mechanic to basically allow you to be a good guy and help out anyone in distress.

I don't envy the task ahead - ie. turning these general ideas into solid, fair, balanced code free of exploits, but it's very encouraging that these improvements are being considered and feedback from the community solicited at an early stage. o7

 

[Deerjesus]

Hello Commander Mr_Blastman!

This idea is more focused on addressing the "random killer" issue that is a part of the PVP vs PVE debate.

So I think it's safe to assume that we want to allow piracy without killing the trader (we already have hatchbreaker limpets and module damage to drives and cargo hatch, but we'll continue to look at other ways to enable piracy without murder).

Harsher penalties will only kill the little interaction there is between players in open. Especially ones that give a sudden omnipotent ability to all NPCs.

 

[shambles1980]

on the matter of bounties, they just get a friend to kill them and they take turns. so bounties are like their payment for just killing. (so increased bounties is technically more insentive for killing soft targets)
they also just jump in to a side winder to make them dormant.
So its not a very good bounty system. but any serious changes also have knock on affects.


Perhaps (given insurance levels are set for beta backers)
a better idea than my previous criminals dont get insurance idea.
What if A cmdr kills a CMDR who is not wanted and not a PP opposition then they both pay the insurance value of the destroyed ship.
(this is paid at the lower amount) if a beta backer kills some one then they both pay the beta backer premium. (that way no one is going to be worse off than the criminal)

again "report crimes against me" set to off, would ignore this, so consequential pvp can continue as is

Wanted players Are viable targets, and so only they pay the insurance.
power play hostiles would also be viable targets so only they pay insurance.

again it has relative effect of making soft targets less attractive. whilst still keeping the loss system in place.
this again lets the jerks be jerks (but it now has a cost)
and it lets the pirates be pirates. and the traders have good faith that they will be released if they drop cargo.
Explorers and noobs would be considered very soft targets and more likely to be left alone.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Harsher penalties will only kill the little interaction there is between players in open. Especially ones that give a sudden omnipotent ability to all NPCs.

Harsher penalties will kill "interaction" between people who want to grief noobs and those at receiving end.

 

[CMDR Bloodhawk]

on the matter of bounties, they just get a friend to kill them and they take turns. so bounties are like their payment for just killing.
they also just jump in to a side winder to make them dormant.
So its not a very good bounty system. but any serious changes also have knock on affects.


Perhaps (given insurance levels are set for beta backers)
a better idea than my previous criminals dont get insurance idea.
What if A cmdr kills a CMDR who is not wanted and not a PP opposition then they both pay the insurance value of the destroyed ship. (this is paid at the lower ammount) if a beta backer kills some one then they both pay the beta backer premium.

again it has relative effect of making soft targets less attractive. whilst still keeping the loss system in place.
this again lets the jerks be jerks (but it now has a cost)
and it lets the pirates be pirates. and the traders have good faith that they will be released if they drop cargo.
Explorers and noobs would be considered very soft targets and more likely to be left alone.

If I gank a noob in a sidey the 3200 cr rebuy isn't even going to be noticeable.

 

[Jackboot]

What about adding some kind of feature to trade vessels that allows them to "strike the colours" which would indicate that they were willing to surrender/drop cargo/negotiate with whoever interdicted them and would disable or reduce the their drive ability but would also create harsh penalties for the attacker if they were destroyed. This would fit in somewhat historically as well as it was a major crime during the age of sail to fire on a ship that had lowered her flag. That way, if you are a random murderer you get the harsh penalties for breaking galactic law but pirates can still get cargo and even have time to communicate after an interdiction, and the trader could know that if they were just murdered while in this mode the attacker would be facing immediate consequence.

 

[Jockey79]

Hello Commanders!

Usual caveat: no guarantee, no ETA! This is just another thought experiment.

A quick question regarding player-versus-player (not AI) in open:

Currently there is no real difference between crime against AI and crime against humans.

Do folk think that additional, relatively severe in-game penalties for illegal ship destruction where there was a large disparity between rank/power of murderer to victim would be a worthwhile thing?

As an example suggestion: a high combat rank player in a combat capable ship boils a low combat rank player in a trade vessel. In addition to a bounty, the murderer is unable to dock at high security systems and suffers an increased insurance premium excess for an amount of time.

Continued offences of this nature increase and prolong the punitive measures.

Would a system like this help reconcile the two factions of the PVP and PVE, or would it not really address the issue?

Thoughts?

Sounds like a good starting point to me.

One of the reasons given in the Solo/Open/Groups mega thread series that comes up quite often is, that some players feel the attackers have little to no "risk" - so people who do not PvP a lot switch out of Open due to the perceived imbalance in the risks, as it is all squarely on the victims (I.E. new player or none combat focused careers). And of course, this decreases the number of folks available for PvP encounters.

So giving visible / immediate consequences to those who commit unprovoked attacks would be a great start in giving some players comfort that their ship destruction had (or will have) an effect on the person(s) who did it, and not just them hyperjumping off laughing all the way.

Might also be worth looking at disposable characters, as some people do start with eagles / cobras - who can just use the starting gear for the purpose of getting the final kill shot (so no one in the wing gets the murder charge), then be deleted and remade without ever facing any consequences (hence the "(s)" at the end of person above - perhaps making sure consequences are wing related and timed to any who was in that wing, as people do wing beacon in to an instance then leave a wing right after - so perhaps for the purpose of a kill they can still be classed as part of the wing??)

 

[paulca]

Do we need "Carebear space" and "Yarrr! space"? Then those in Yarrrr! space could buy ships and weapons with real money instead of playing the rest of the game while boasting about making the Carebears cry.

Oh... wait.. wrong game.

 

[CMDR Bloodhawk]

What about adding some kind of feature to trade vessels that allows them to "strike the colours" which would indicate that they were willing to surrender/drop cargo/negotiate with whoever interdicted them and would disable or reduce the their drive ability but would also create harsh penalties for the attacker if they were destroyed. This would fit in somewhat historically as well as it was a major crime during the age of sail to fire on a ship that had lowered her flag. That way, if you are a random murderer you get the harsh penalties for breaking galactic law but pirates can still get cargo and even have time to communicate after an interdiction, and the trader could know that if they were just murdered while in this mode the attacker would be facing immediate consequence.

Really interesting! Kind of in line with a PVP on/off flag without being so drastic

 

[kevwil]

1. Preventing wanted commanders from docking at stations belonging to a faction that have a bounty on you is a fantastic idea. Seems like a no-brainer to me. The reasoning for this is that if you want to be a criminal, if you want to go around killing anything and everything, then life should be slightly tough for you.
2. The bounty you receive should have a few factors. Right now I believe it is 6000 credits. It should factor in the ship you're attacking and the combat rank of the target (player only - who cares about NPCs?).
3. When you become wanted as a result of killing another player, cops should be on you like blackflies on your plate at a picnic. Once wanted, supercruise should be a true danger. To further this, I'd love to see some sort of notoriety tier system. Sort of like Grand Theft Auto. This is not an original idea. I've mentioned it in the past on other places and I've also read it a few times. GTA implements a good system for this. Borrowing some elements of it seems like a good idea to me.

The one problem that is unrelated to murdering and crime is the masslock system. This is a toughie. Right now small ships cannot for the life of them low wake from a bigger ship until 4.5km away. The charge time is insane which basically leads to death unless they have the 10 seconds to high wake. Going silent and chaffing and flying around all over the place helps but ships like the FAS and Clipper and FDL (all common ganking ships) can keep up with pretty much everything and have lots of time to kill. What I'm suggesting here is an overhaul to how masslock works. I do not have a solution but it would at least give players a better chance of escape. I'm also not saying masslock is completely broken and actually needs changing. But I would like to see something. My main problem with it is that two smaller ships can't masslock a bigger ship. For example, 4 pythons can't masslock an Anaconda. Each ship has a masslock number. They should be added up when factoring masslock so a group of smaller ships can lock a corvette. This is all even worse when, say, a Clipper interdicts a type 9. The type 9 will never EVER escape. It's just not happening no matter what; which leads me to my next suggestion if masslock should be untouched:

Interdicting. Right now any ship can equip a 1E interdictor and pull over anything all the same if they had a 8A interdicter. A sidewinder can interdict a cutter. This far out example is a waste of time for everyone. The cutter isn't dying. The sidewinder is. There is no battle here. Just a waste of time for the cutter and trolling by the sidewinder. My idea is that the class and quality of interdictor dictates the mass of a ship that can be pulled over. So for example a 4B interdicter might be required to pull a Python. A Type 9 might need a C6 interdicter. And so on. That means an annoying sidewinder can no longer pull large ships. Basically, if you're flying a small ship, you're not trolling or pirating type 9's. The type 9 now has an actual advantage in a few select scenarios (and now can play in open with reduced fear of death which is better for the community). It's still boned vs. the clipper but at least it's not going to get killed by a DBX or Viper mkIII. Lastly, the rating and class of interdicter also might dictate how easy it is to win the mini-game. If you want to blow a PILE of credits of a C7 interdictor and sacrifice cargo space or shields on your clipper, you deserve to pull that ship over. You've made a huge decision in your ship's combat effectiveness so this should give you an edge. This mechanic would play true for other PVP ships that mostly lack a huge number of internals like the FDL. FDL NEEDS those 2 C4 internals for SCBs or hull. With this mechanic, if it wants to interdict, it has to sacrifice one for a C4 interdicter. This will make NPC assassination missions a little harder but the benefits to ganking/pirating/murder/unwanted pvp would be hugely beneficial in my opinion. Another thing that might be worth discussion is another internal or utility that acts to counteract or resist interdictions. It might buff the class of interdicter needed to start an interdiction or it might make the minigame easier. Either way, I'd love to see the trader ships finally get some non-combat defensive measures.

My apologies for wall of text. This got bigger than I was initially thinking but would really really love to see changes to interdiction at some point - especially a means for countering or resisting it.

 

[_Dastardly_]

Hello Commander Bumbles!

I'm interested in your opinion. Even though these penalties would only be applied in cases where there was a very clear mismatch of ability *and* a crime was committed, you think it would be a deterrent to player versus player activities.

Do you (or any other folk, feel free to respond), feel that there should be no additional penalties for lopsided encounters? That the world should remain uncaring and cold as is (don't worry folk, this isn't a trick question - there's no right or wrong answer!)?

I think there were a lot of ideas on this back in the earlier pages of this thread.

Including :

• Remove ship scans from supercruise so that players cant tell if they are attacking a combat-conda from a trade-conda.
• Allow traders to insure their cargo?
• Quick (NPC Viper System Authority?) Response to attacked ships. (Variable. Sometimes quick, sometimes longer.. depending on security of the system (also government state etc) a highsec system in civil war might have slower response)
• Notifications of incoming SA presence (So PVP'ers and victims can choose to stay or run)
• Reputation System so that players can be rated (visibly) from Upstanding Citizens to Dastardly Criminals (Then you could also scale penalties based on how 'bad' the player is).
• Additional modules possibly deployable/destroyable to hold (all) ships in place and stop jumping away]

But any changes to make things safer in 'highsec' would need compensating measures to push people to more dangerous areas. Lower profits in safe areas, higher ones in lowersec. More variability in trade.

 

[Kinmob]

Hello Commanders!

Usual caveat: no guarantee, no ETA! This is just another thought experiment.

A quick question regarding player-versus-player (not AI) in open:

Currently there is no real difference between crime against AI and crime against humans.

Do folk think that additional, relatively severe in-game penalties for illegal ship destruction where there was a large disparity between rank/power of murderer to victim would be a worthwhile thing?

As an example suggestion: a high combat rank player in a combat capable ship boils a low combat rank player in a trade vessel. In addition to a bounty, the murderer is unable to dock at high security systems and suffers an increased insurance premium excess for an amount of time.

Continued offences of this nature increase and prolong the punitive measures.

Would a system like this help reconcile the two factions of the PVP and PVE, or would it not really address the issue?

Thoughts?

Speaking as a "griefer", and knowing the folks who you are dealing with first hand. Any of the solutions you listed will be used in way you don't intend. For instance, many griefers like to roll around with a harmless rank. And many more would if you based penalties off of combat rank. Many people would get into a sidewinder with harmless rank and find a way to get murdered by others just to inflict the penalty on them. It WOULD happen. That's just an example I'm thinking up off the top of my head with what you have suggested. There are many people out there far more creative than me.

No the BEST and most constructive way to combat random murder is to give the community the tools to do it themselves. There needs to be a way for bounty hunters to track murderers. There also needs to be better payouts for those bounty hunters. If you could make bounty hunting players lucrative, and I'm talking multi millions of credits (they are risking their ships rebuy after all) for taking out a difficult target, you will enrich everyone's gameplay involved AND create a solution to the problem. Murderers will be too busy being hunted to worry about killing small fry. Bounty hunters will be an actual thing! Murderers will have the notoriaty they seek. It would be win win win.

I guess to summerize, don't bandaid fix it removing realism and fun for some, use the situation as a challenge to make improvements for everyone.

 

[Deerjesus]

Harsher penalties will kill "interaction" between people who want to grief noobs and those at receiving end.

Let me preface this by saying I am strictly a smuggler and occasional NPC bounty hunter. Last I checked, this game is a space simulator/sand box experience. With that comes the price of dealing with people who are likely to kill others, especially for no reason. If you wish to remove that ability, you may as well remove most player vs player content that isn't confined within the CQC game mode. But if you want to have a system in place which is actually meant to be that sand box experience, you have to accept that there will be some negatives such as the random killers. Otherwise, kick all aspects of PVP to the curb and say goodbye to the paying customers that are interested in it. And I can tell you from past experience that putting PVP interactions into a confined, sterile environment with harsh penalties is not only not fun, but also can result in the decline/death of a game, even one that has a large portion of content other than PVP to enjoy.

 

[CMDR Bloodhawk]

Interdicting. Right now any ship can equip a 1E interdictor and pull over anything all the same if they had a 8A interdicter. A sidewinder can interdict a cutter. This far out example is a waste of time for everyone. The cutter isn't dying. The sidewinder is. There is no battle here. Just a waste of time for the cutter and trolling by the sidewinder.

This is an extremely effective guerrilla tactic though, especially when outnumbered by a better equipped foe

 

[shambles1980]

If I gank a noob in a sidey the 3200 cr rebuy isn't even going to be noticeable.

for the noob the rebuy is 0. (they get the same ship back for free)
if all you do is gank noobs it will soon add up and become a less attractive game style.

At least the noobs would know there was a repercussion for the action.

p.s

you cant remove play styles from the game no matter how despicable you may think they are.
The only reall option is to increase the punishment, and i really cant think of a way to make it effective other than remove insurance from the criminal untill the value of the ship used in the crime has been lost to deaths.
or
To make both parties pay the insurance cost of the destroyed ship (if the killed cmdr was clean and not an opposition powerplay player)

Given beta backers have a set guaranteed insurance rate, then the former cannot be used which only leaves the latter which is less of a punishment, but at least it is something.