Crime and punishment

[Riktar]

Virtual “prison time” for criminals.

As it stands right now, you can be whoever you want to be in Elite Dangerous. Trader, smuggler, pirate, etc. And the RP is what makes player interaction so exciting! You never know who you will meet in Open. See that hollow icon? Is it friend or foe? Will your interaction with said hollow icon come from the comms panel or from the barrel of a gun? I can see where this could make for an exciting experience in ED. The universe is alive, the possibilities are many, and the outcome is undecided.

As it stands now, one of those outcomes can be getting your ship blown up for no reason other than “the lulz” by some butthead. Maybe there is no talk, maybe their is, heck maybe you could become famous by having your experience recorded and posted on Youtube while the creator of the video adds in his girlie laughter while showing the world how he/she had you flailing about in an effort to escape his “madskilz” with a joystick.

And let's not forget the salt being mined at your expense.

And when it's all over, all you have lost is some time, right? You just need to get better, practice more, learn to avoid the buttheads in space. All you really lost was the time you had in game building up to the ship that was shot out from under you. No big deal, right?

The fact that the perpetrator didn't lose a thing is where the equation is unbalanced. He/She is free to continue on looking for his/her next victim, in the hope of finding another supply of salt for their throne.

Hmmmm,,,,

How about the following:

Keep the bounty system in place as it stands.

Want to play a pyschopath who murders innocent (pronounced unwanted) Cmdrs? Have at it. Continue on with your rampage, boast about how many have tried but no one has (as of yet) been able to give you your comeuppance in the field of battle. Keep talking about the 7 figure size of your bounty.

And if the day comes that someone does knock you off your throne of salt the rebuy screen has an additional line that states you will be going to “virtual” prison for the crimes you committed against the innocent. That 6 or 7 figure bounty is not just measuring credits, it's showing how many seconds you will have to wait until you are released from jail and can log back onto the servers.

And by the way, there is no committing suicide and having your bounty erased. Why would you want to have it erased anyway? Isn't it your badge of honor? Doesn't it show the world just how big that pile of salt is that your sitting on? What you don't like this idea? Why? The punishment doesn't cost you anything,

Just your time. You know, the same thing you told your victim(s).

And since (according to the attacker) time is cheap for the victim, it should be no problem for them to accept the same fate (lost time in “prison”) when they meet up with someone who is a bigger butthead and has more “madskilz” than they do. Or if a group of players decide to wing up and take out the offending player. For some this may be too harsh, local laws may prevent this from being implemented, the coding is too complicated, etc, etc.

If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read this suggestion.

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

Love it. Good idea. If the game is about an immersive experience of being a pilot in a galaxy, bring on the immersion. Criminals should have to actually pay for doing things.

 

[mistohise]

Two issues that I can think of :
All too easy to get accidental wanted status. Driving people who get that away from the game is counter productive.

This would encourage griefing designed to make others wanted, to the same end as above.

Oh, and a third: the actual griefers would just as likely clear save and avoid the whole thing, and just collect seed money from their mates.

 

[Riktar]

Two issues that I can think of :
All too easy to get accidental wanted status. Driving people who get that away from the game is counter productive.

This would encourage griefing designed to make others wanted, to the same end as above.

Oh, and a third: the actual griefers would just as likely clear save and avoid the whole thing, and just collect seed money from their mates.

I have considered your points. So maybe the system doesn't start measuring the seconds until a player hits 4 figures, or 5 figures. Whatever. But even if it didn't, the bounty system stays the same from a time perspective. Keep your nose clean for a week and the bounty goes away. And even if you can't do that, Cmon, you get a 600k bounty for a whoops moment and what have you lost if you do get killed? 10 minutes of game time? One trip for a snack and you are back in game.

As to griefers: I am expecting their Ego would prevent them from clearing their save. They can't help but want to showoff (by way of bounty amounts on them) how much of a tough guy they are. And even if they did try, could the system be set so heinous crimes (killing an unwanted Cmdr) stay linked to the account?

I know their is no perfect solution. This is just a thought.

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

I don't think anyone will complain that the C+P mechanism in ED is inadequate but you seem to be trying to kill an ant with a nuke. Assuming a 6k bounty you are looking at 100mins of "prison" time which is simply stupid, traders aren't made to wait a day whilst their 500 tons of cargo is loaded or made to wait an hour for docking clearance. Similarly when you buy your Cutter should you be expected to wait a couple of months before the shipyard makes it?

In summary C+P needs an overhaul and indeed is being looked at but your proposals are at best knee jerk and at worst flame bait (I'm not sure which).

 

[Von Shadow]

A 1m Cr bounty would be 11 days though .... you can't stop someone playing for using mechanics perfectly allowed in the game .... yes we have a crime/punishment inbalance but completely blocking them is not gonna fly.

Limiting to solo for 11 days .... might be a doable option .... akin to purgatory

 

[Riktar]

Love it. Good idea. If the game is about an immersive experience of being a pilot in a galaxy, bring on the immersion. Criminals should have to actually pay for doing things.

Thanks. But remember, their is no "cost" to the criminal. Just their time. And time is cheap,,,,

Right?

 

[babelfisch]

I have seen the same thread two months ago. It didn't end well. *grabs popcorn*

 

[Riktar]

I don't think anyone will complain that the C+P mechanism in ED is inadequate but you seem to be trying to kill an ant with a nuke. Assuming a 6k bounty you are looking at 100mins of "prison" time which is simply stupid, traders aren't made to wait a day whilst their 500 tons of cargo is loaded or made to wait an hour for docking clearance. Similarly when you buy your Cutter should you be expected to wait a couple of months before the shipyard makes it?

In summary C+P needs an overhaul and indeed is being looked at but your proposals are at best knee jerk and at worst flame bait (I'm not sure which).

Nothing knee jerk about it. And as I stated, the seconds don't have to start being counted until the player hits a certain size. 4 figures, 5 figures, 6 figures, 10ths of a second instead?

And while I will not use the same verbiage as you, I am talking about paying for a crime, not paying for a ship. Now that would be a less than smart idea. Unless of course you want a custom ordered Cutter from the factory, rather than buying an on the lot model,,,,,,

 

[trollson]

Crime and Punishment - they go together like rights and responsibilities...

Time-out is not effective:

Unfortunately, a "time-out" has little consequence in a virtual game - the player can just go and do something else instead, even leaving the log-in screen on overnight if they have to.

Hard-labour is an option:

When this problem has arisen in other games, the only equivalence to a prison sentence was hard labour. In Elite terms this would be trapping the player in a system with a non-hyperspace mining boat, and told that they would be released only when they deliver some quota of minerals to the prison station. Thus the player has to "play" out their punishment, and cannot just wait it out.

Of course, this isn't "fun" and by itself has no place in a paid-for game. The game cannot "punish" players (as opposed to characters) unless they break the T&Cs of the game. So perhaps permit rescue missions and prisoner escape scenarios so that it isn't a simple grind?

So is restricting recourse:

Meanwhile, it should be a no-brainer that a player with a bounty on their heads cannot simply dock at a facility where that bounty is enforced. Either the station is hostile to them, or (and) they are not allowed to leave without some form of settlement (by payment or hard-labour).

This could leave players in the situation where they have nowhere to go - no reachable non-hostile station or landing. Hmm... then you need an option to surrender to the authorities - at least they keep their ship once their debt to society is paid.

On framing other Players:

For most cases this probably represents a bug and should be treated as such - not an excuse to avoid a crime-punishment counterbalance.

However in real-life people get framed, so it is acceptable if there are legitimate in-game ways that this can happen.

 

[Riktar]

A 1m Cr bounty would be 11 days though .... you can't stop someone playing for using mechanics perfectly allowed in the game .... yes we have a crime/punishment inbalance but completely blocking them is not gonna fly.

Limiting to solo for 11 days .... might be a doable option .... akin to purgatory

I am proposing a concept of an idea. If the parameters are too harsh, fine. Modify them.

My thoughts on this are seeing how the "time argument" is received by those who suggest it's not a big deal to take away the time spent by others building up their ship, etc,,,,

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Had a very similar idea in the past : put the Prison Colonies in the Game to good use!

- Criminal gets captured by the law (after destruction by System Authority, System Defense Forces, System SWAT Team, Bounty Hunting party sent out by Governments/Factions - or simply making a stupid mistake within a System with jurisdiction).

- instead of typical Insurance screen, sees "You've been captured by the law!"

- has to serve a time manually Mining a min. amount in an unfriendly Prison Colony, no luxuries - only hard, manual labor with no Collectors

- FSD is permit-locked (unable to leave the System)

- is released only after paying the Bounty in full, once the min. time in Prison is served and the min. amount of work as been done

- Criminals with permits to Permit Systems can and will get those permits revoked
- Criminals with Government Ranks will get progressively demoted for crimes within affected jurisdictions, upto and including losing any Insurance coverage for still using a higher Rank-tied Ship (no rebuy, as CMDR is flying it without license)

So carry on indeed with the "Path of the Warrior" and destroying clean Ships... But now it'll come with a real risk - the prospect of spending hours, days or even weeks in Prison (depending on amount and severity of committed crimes).

 

[Roycie]

Absolutely no way, i'm afraid. You can't stop someone from playing.

I'm looking forward to the C&P changes next major patch, because it is quite poor at the moment. Trader stands to loose 2 hours, psyco stands to lose far less if they die, and an insultingly small bounty if they kill.

You know how many cops chase you when you have 10 stacked robigo smuggling missions? That's what i'd like to see after a psyco in a hi-sec system.
Also, if we have NPC pirates hunting traders, why not include NPC Bounty hunters hunting psyco players?
Or how about being about to place (out of your own funds) up to 25% of your rebuy as a bounty on the player who killed you at the rebuy screen? Maybe that'd be too easy to exploit?

Guess we wait and see what they've done!

 

[Riktar]

Also, is it possible for only the crimes against Cmdr's be assessed? I get that everyone can have a "whoopsie" moment here and their. Especially in a conflict zone or hazres site.

The point is, if you want to take away the time of other Cmdr's fine. Be ready to have it taken away from you when karma comes calling.....

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Had a very similar idea in the past : put the Prison Colonies in the Game to good use!

- Criminal gets captured by the law (after destruction by System Authority, System Defense Forces, System SWAT Team, Bounty Hunting party sent out by Governments/Factions - or simply making a stupid mistake within a System with jurisdiction).

- instead of typical Insurance screen, sees "You've been captured by the law!"

- has to serve a time manually Mining a min. amount in an unfriendly Prison Colony, no luxuries - only hard, manual labor with no Collectors

- FSD is permit-locked (unable to leave the System)

- is released only after paying the Bounty in full, once the min. time in Prison is served and the min. amount of work as been done

- Criminals with permits to Permit Systems can and will get those permits revoked
- Criminals with Government Ranks will get progressively demoted for crimes within affected jurisdictions, upto and including losing any Insurance coverage for still using a higher Rank-tied Ship (no rebuy, as CMDR is flying it without license)

So carry on indeed with the "Path of the Warrior" and destroying clean Ships... But now it'll come with a real risk - the prospect of spending hours, days or even weeks in Prison (depending on amount and severity of committed crimes).

Yep, yep, I could see this working as well. And since they are still "in the game" their is no denial of service complaint!!!!

 

[Sandmann]

I'm a rabid supporter of a decent crime and punishment system but even I think this is a step too far. People (even RPG psychos, pirates, griefers, and others) play games to have fun and all PAID for the privilege. Noone is going to "sit in jail" and call it fun, they'll simply leave the game if you impose that on them (and while that may not SOUND like a bad idea, if the game loses too many players it WILL fold).

I do like Falconfly's idea of having criminals have to serve some sort of "community service" (Mining? Why not? The Klingons put Kirk and Bones into a mine as punishment, right?), but I'd want to see some sort of sub-game there where you had the chance to either "bribe the warden" into an early release (while no longer being wanted), or "bribe the guards" into looking the other way while you escape (and remained wanted plus some for being an escapee). It couldn't just be a cash bribe though... something they'd value... perhaps a permit to visit an engineer or a valuable loot item or something.

 

[Bigglesof206]

No computer games company is going to voluntarily suspend players for committing 'crimes' that aren't banned in the EULA/terms of service/game rules, this is a suggestion that FD commit commercial suicide, which is unlikely to occur.

Personally I'd go for scaling fines to the crime in a non-linear fashion...but only for killing clean (unwanted) CMDRs (not NPCs), and only if your just invented 'Happy to PvP' flag is set to off - as consensual PvP shouldn't attract crime type retribution. Every time you kill an unwanted CMDR the fine multiplies by 10 (as a pulled from thin air type of figure), so your 20k fine for kill 1 is 20k, 200k, 2M, 20M, 200M...it won't take long to reach the point where you have to sell everything you own to pay the fine. Now, you can't clear THIS fine by dying, you HAVE to pay it, and you can't leave a station until it is paid...so you get to dock, and that's probably it until you exit the dock again in your new sidewinder with zero in the bank.

There you go, grief people and you get griefed automatically.

There are probably huge flaws in that idea too, frankly, but at least it doesn't involve banning people for playing inside the rules.

Dave

 

[Riktar]

I'm a rabid supporter of a decent crime and punishment system but even I think this is a step too far. People (even RPG psychos, pirates, griefers, and others) play games to have fun and all PAID for the privilege. Noone is going to "sit in jail" and call it fun, they'll simply leave the game if you impose that on them (and while that may not SOUND like a bad idea, if the game loses too many players it WILL fold).

Good point. And yes, you don't want players to leave the game. To that point: How many players have left (or will leave) the game because of buttheads vs how many of said buttheads will leave the game because they can't have fun? I have heard it said that the amount of buttheads in the game is small so,,,,,,,, ?

I do like Falconfly's idea of having criminals have to serve some sort of "community service" (Mining? Why not? The Klingons put Kirk and Bones into a mine as punishment, right?), but I'd want to see some sort of sub-game there where you had the chance to either "bribe the warden" into an early release (while no longer being wanted), or "bribe the guards" into looking the other way while you escape (and remained wanted plus some for being an escapee). It couldn't just be a cash bribe though... something they'd value... perhaps a permit to visit an engineer or a valuable loot item or something.

And I like his idea as well.

 

[Marra Morgan]

Absolutely not.

I often have a bounty of hundreds of thousands on my head at any one time, not a single credit of it from attacking other players.
There's no way to justify why I should be suspended from playing for pursuing legit Powerplay, BGS and RP activites.

Faster and harsher police response in high-security systems is a much better deterrent - that would actually make me think twice about where I commit a crime!

 

[Riktar]

No computer games company is going to voluntarily suspend players for committing 'crimes' that aren't banned in the EULA/terms of service/game rules, this is a suggestion that FD commit commercial suicide, which is unlikely to occur.

I guess that would depend on what type of player is leaving and how big their numbers are. How many people might come back (or back into open) if the knew their death had SOME consequence for the perpetrator?

Personally I'd go for scaling fines to the crime in a non-linear fashion...but only for killing clean (unwanted) CMDRs (not NPCs), and only if your just invented 'Happy to PvP' flag is set to off - as consensual PvP shouldn't attract crime type retribution. Every time you kill an unwanted CMDR the fine multiplies by 10 (as a pulled from thin air type of figure), so your 20k fine for kill 1 is 20k, 200k, 2M, 20M, 200M...it won't take long to reach the point where you have to sell everything you own to pay the fine. Now, you can't clear THIS fine by dying, you HAVE to pay it, and you can't leave a station until it is paid...so you get to dock, and that's probably it until you exit the dock again in your new sidewinder with zero in the bank.

There you go, grief people and you get griefed automatically.

There are probably huge flaws in that idea too, frankly, but at least it doesn't involve banning people for playing inside the rules.

Dave

I would applaud that suggestion as well.

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Absolutely not.

I often have a bounty of hundreds of thousands on my head at any one time, not a single credit of it from attacking other players.
There's no way to justify why I should be suspended from playing for pursuing legit Powerplay, BGS and RP activites.

Faster and harsher police response in high-security systems is a much better deterrent - that would actually make me think twice about where I commit a crime!

As I mentioned earlier, the flag would come from crimes against unwanted or clean Cmdr's, and NOT from station/moving violations or crimes against NPC's. Admittedly, I know nothing about coding so I don't know how difficult that would be to implement.

If I did not state this, my apologies. I will add that caveat now: Shoot all the NPC's you want, commit all the crimes you want against the pixel population.

Against unwanted Human Cmdr's tho? Prepare to pay up at some point in some way,,,,,, But if the Cmdr has a wanted status? Well then, game on.

 

[Deathwatch]

I guess that would depend on what type of player is leaving and how big their numbers are. How many people might come back (or back into open) if the knew their death had SOME consequence for the perpetrator?


I would applaud that suggestion as well.



Fdev want npcs to be treated the same by the crimes system heck a trader undermining would have assassins from those groups on their backd