More difficult to do, easier to get away with.
Yep - gaming the system, or meta gaming as they call it.
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Elite Babysitter...
- Thread starter JeffRyan
- Start date
More difficult to do, easier to get away with.
Yep - gaming the system, or meta gaming as they call it.
Completely agree - but this is one argument that won't get resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. So...
Is it? I'm not so sure about that, if practically everything in the game discourages unlawful player killing, up to the point where overly "eager" PvP enthusiasts will be pushed out of instances until they are playing the game alone with themselves...
But people must be scared of griefers for a reason surely? I mean surely if we can tell PCs from NPCs then the griefers would instantly descend and ruin everyone's game despite the in game consequences?
Oops, forgot my sarcasm tag!
We do have a problem don't we? Survival in a hostile universe kind of relies on stealth and not being noticed, and the p2p nature of the multiplayer provides more opportunities for 'stealthy' shenanigans outside of the game. How exactly is anyone going to get 'caught' and reported, unless what they are doing is blatantly obvious, and corroborated by multiple/independent witnesses over a period of time?
Completely disagree. In what way is that in any sense meta-gaming? It is not an 'out-of-character' action or as Wikipedia puts it a strategy that 'transcends a prescribed ruleset'. For one, where is the ruleset to 'transcend' here?, and two, its not 'out-of-character' for the overall simulation of the universe.
Are you seriously suggesting that trying to hide to avoid being killed is somehow 'gaming the system' and should be frowned upon?
*Edit* Hmmm. I suppose players mimicking AI behaviours could be termed 'meta-gaming' - but I still see nothing wrong in doing just that. 'Blending in' should be a basic survival skill.
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If people use out of game tools to figure out who is who then you won't catch them, all you'll ever have is circumstantial evidence and they can simply claim "he was flying like an PC pretending to be an NPC" or whatever. Perfectly legitimate excuse in isolation.
Which neatly brings me to... So it's not "out of character" to think "right, I'm going to turn off my ID transponder and fly like an NPC flies in the hope I'm I'm ignored by other PCs"? Seems the essence of out of character to me.
Maybe, if someone get's reported once... but not if it happens the second, third or fourth time. Also, again, excuses will not save him/her from the game's instancing system.
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Reported for what? Attacking a spaceship in a space combat/trading/exploration game?
And how does instancing help if there is no justification for the claim of griefing if he attacks a ship hiding the fact it's a player?
Ok, now you are trolling... stuff like that is obviously not report-worthy, since it's part of the game/covered by game mechanics... but there are things that are not, like actual grieving.
Also: The instancing systems will not be dependent on reporting alone, it will be controlled by general ingame behavior... this also was stated before.
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This is a 2nd Warning to this thread to try to keep it out of the region of personal attacks and questioning mods.
Please report any posts you find offensive or in violation of forum rules by using the REPORT POST button (triangle with !) at the top right of the post.
Any further inflammatory postings or personal attacks may lead to thread closure.
Yeah man, get used to it ... you will be reported, "hellbanned" persecutted, burnt on a stake to a crispy crisp cos You like to fight in space COMABT/trading/exploration game.
This is how its gonna be overused and abused. I saw it in different games, everywhere there are laws like this it will come for You.
They are everywhere, they think theyre entitled to their space game and everyone else should clap as they pass thru system and be overly happy when You see them. (aka pink hopping untochable self proclaimed kings and queens of the universe emergin from elitist only clubs and son so on so on).
The way I see it, the reason people are so afraid of PvP is that their experience from shooters and EVE is that NPCs offer predictable and thus neglectable risk while other players will often enough just show up out of the blue and flat out destroy someone in a second.
What I think a game must do, instead of blindly disallowing PvP, is to give people a real idea of the risk they put themselves in, a meaningful (but fair) way to control that risk, and a proper answer to a negative outcome.
Take one extreme case, FTL. It doesn't have PvP, but it does throw pretty unpredictable risk at the player. So it becomes a way of planning for those risky encounters. It also provides an answer to negative outcome, even if it's a very simple one: Game over, try to get further next time.
In a way, though, I think "you lose, start over" is a better answer than "go back to the last save and pay a fee", even more so than "you fail, respawn". Maybe the less the actual consequence, the more "you lose" just sounds like "you suck".
Then, in EVE, PvP is not quite as harsh as it's made out to be. It's just that EVE is so horribly complicated that it is really bad at teaching you how to actually play it against players, how to avoid fights, and finally, how to deal with the loss of a ship. The latter is maybe the most important one: Always have another one ready! They have ship insurance, but I don't know why they even bother. Usually the modules on a ship are so expensive that the insurance payout doesn't do much. So the penalty for ship loss is really harsh but it doesn't matter unless you can't easily replace it.
So for Elite, outside of Iron Man mode, we have immortal player characters and ship insurance. Still, what we need is for players to know the risks they take and to teach them that they will lose their ship. Everything else can only lead to handwaving, fake solutions, and animosity between players.
One word on fair fights, maybe. They say that if you get into a fair fight, you're doing it wrong. That's true from a purely strategic point of view, but maybe it shouldn't always be possible to choose the fight to your advantage. In the last years, "fair matchmaking" has become the norm in computer games, but I've come to think of it as kind of a kludge. After all, matches that are unfair also have benefits beside their drawbacks: They can teach a lot to the loser and, I think this is often overlooked, they give the winner a sense that they are actually good at the game. So in my opinion, matches should occur within rough "weight classes" of player experience (plain number of wins could be a good indicator), but be allowed to be otherwise at random.
I'll leave it to the designers at Frontier to make anything of the above.
What I think a game must do, instead of blindly disallowing PvP, is to give people a real idea of the risk they put themselves in, a meaningful (but fair) way to control that risk, and a proper answer to a negative outcome.
Take one extreme case, FTL. It doesn't have PvP, but it does throw pretty unpredictable risk at the player. So it becomes a way of planning for those risky encounters. It also provides an answer to negative outcome, even if it's a very simple one: Game over, try to get further next time.
In a way, though, I think "you lose, start over" is a better answer than "go back to the last save and pay a fee", even more so than "you fail, respawn". Maybe the less the actual consequence, the more "you lose" just sounds like "you suck".
Then, in EVE, PvP is not quite as harsh as it's made out to be. It's just that EVE is so horribly complicated that it is really bad at teaching you how to actually play it against players, how to avoid fights, and finally, how to deal with the loss of a ship. The latter is maybe the most important one: Always have another one ready! They have ship insurance, but I don't know why they even bother. Usually the modules on a ship are so expensive that the insurance payout doesn't do much. So the penalty for ship loss is really harsh but it doesn't matter unless you can't easily replace it.
So for Elite, outside of Iron Man mode, we have immortal player characters and ship insurance. Still, what we need is for players to know the risks they take and to teach them that they will lose their ship. Everything else can only lead to handwaving, fake solutions, and animosity between players.
One word on fair fights, maybe. They say that if you get into a fair fight, you're doing it wrong. That's true from a purely strategic point of view, but maybe it shouldn't always be possible to choose the fight to your advantage. In the last years, "fair matchmaking" has become the norm in computer games, but I've come to think of it as kind of a kludge. After all, matches that are unfair also have benefits beside their drawbacks: They can teach a lot to the loser and, I think this is often overlooked, they give the winner a sense that they are actually good at the game. So in my opinion, matches should occur within rough "weight classes" of player experience (plain number of wins could be a good indicator), but be allowed to be otherwise at random.
I'll leave it to the designers at Frontier to make anything of the above.
My point was directly connected to the proposed mechanism where players can hide the fact they're players. If you are attacked when you're not displaying the fact you're a player how can you accuse someone of griefing? To them you are just a ship - player or NPC, they don't know. Except they could be using out of game tools to detect when players are present.
Dude from our point of view it's the other way round. It's simple really as a few people have already mentioned on both sides of this argument. NEITHER side is wrong. Not really. Just this over-complicated system and over-protection is NOT the way to go.
Risk / reward
For reference, i am a "pvp" player.
I envisage playing ED as a pirate/bounty hunter. Cruising systems for wanted players, or players carrying cargo targets of opportunity. This is not griefing, it is playing within the spirit of Elite.
If a given player wants to remain safe from other player attack, then so be it. There should be a mechanic that allows them to play the game free from player interaction.
HOWEVER
Any gains they make whilst protected from players, should absolutely remain isolated from other players.
In simple terms... I don't want Johnny "no pvp" to make millions of credits in complete safety from other players, and then be able to use those credits to outfit a deadly ship and use it against me in my ship that i have struggled to upgrade whilst being subject to the risks of pvp.
Short version... You wanna play alone? Fine... you can... But you have to STAY ALONE. You cant make a fortune in safety then decide to change your mind.
For reference, i am a "pvp" player.
I envisage playing ED as a pirate/bounty hunter. Cruising systems for wanted players, or players carrying cargo targets of opportunity. This is not griefing, it is playing within the spirit of Elite.
If a given player wants to remain safe from other player attack, then so be it. There should be a mechanic that allows them to play the game free from player interaction.
HOWEVER
Any gains they make whilst protected from players, should absolutely remain isolated from other players.
In simple terms... I don't want Johnny "no pvp" to make millions of credits in complete safety from other players, and then be able to use those credits to outfit a deadly ship and use it against me in my ship that i have struggled to upgrade whilst being subject to the risks of pvp.
Short version... You wanna play alone? Fine... you can... But you have to STAY ALONE. You cant make a fortune in safety then decide to change your mind.
I have a thought on how we can resolve issues. I'm open to having pvp be fully open. As people have indicated, the number of systems is so huge that people will naturally be spread out. I also agree with having low/high sec zones to help with policing. We just need a system that stops griefers. Apologies if this isn't original.
To stop griefers, my suggestion would be that stats get recorded for certain things. Basically any time you crash into another ship, the game checks if it's a pc or npc. If it is a pc the game records both your and their names. The game also records your and his/her velocity vector at the time at/just before impact to determine who was the initiating party.
Effectively, if the same person is initiating impacts into opposing ships multiple times in a short period of time, the player can then choose to report this individual. Having a log in the menu which records these stats would allow you to see the individuals name. The game could work on a 3 strike account multiplayer ban rule. You report this to Frontier where the data is reviewed by an individual who then makes the determination if the strike applies or not.
In the instance that the person tries to get around this by just crashing into multiple people instead of the same person over and over. If you see this behavior and he crashes into you, then you can report the individual stating this in which the devs would then look up the information on that player which shows him doing this behavior over and over since the stats are recorded for all players. This solves the briefing people by crashing into them.
Another aspect of griefing is the same individual(s) keep attacking you. Perhaps recording the last 250 names of the pc characters that shot you (skipping any that occurred within the last 120 seconds of a recording) and whether you initiated contact with that individual first. Then similar to the crash grieifing, you'd have a 3 strike rule. This one is a little bit harder to diagnose as griefing than the crashing aspect, but I think this could work.
If someone reports a person for griefing where none exists, then that person gets a warning. The next incident will be a strike. 3 strikes your out. In this case the reporting person is allowed 4 reporting instances before being banned.
To stop griefers, my suggestion would be that stats get recorded for certain things. Basically any time you crash into another ship, the game checks if it's a pc or npc. If it is a pc the game records both your and their names. The game also records your and his/her velocity vector at the time at/just before impact to determine who was the initiating party.
Effectively, if the same person is initiating impacts into opposing ships multiple times in a short period of time, the player can then choose to report this individual. Having a log in the menu which records these stats would allow you to see the individuals name. The game could work on a 3 strike account multiplayer ban rule. You report this to Frontier where the data is reviewed by an individual who then makes the determination if the strike applies or not.
In the instance that the person tries to get around this by just crashing into multiple people instead of the same person over and over. If you see this behavior and he crashes into you, then you can report the individual stating this in which the devs would then look up the information on that player which shows him doing this behavior over and over since the stats are recorded for all players. This solves the briefing people by crashing into them.
Another aspect of griefing is the same individual(s) keep attacking you. Perhaps recording the last 250 names of the pc characters that shot you (skipping any that occurred within the last 120 seconds of a recording) and whether you initiated contact with that individual first. Then similar to the crash grieifing, you'd have a 3 strike rule. This one is a little bit harder to diagnose as griefing than the crashing aspect, but I think this could work.
If someone reports a person for griefing where none exists, then that person gets a warning. The next incident will be a strike. 3 strikes your out. In this case the reporting person is allowed 4 reporting instances before being banned.