who forces you to kill it?
Deliberate Ramming
- Thread starter shadragon
- Start date
who forces you to kill it?
If the trader knows you cannot kill them without serious (karma) repercussions they will just refuse to drop cargo. The pirate needs to be a threat, without karma penalties.
In mu opinion "karma" should be affected only in high and medium security systems. Lawless/Anarchy systems should treated like Wild West. I think also that combat logging should be punished with other system than karma. Karma should be tied only to player to player and player to environment interactions not to exploits and cheating. Karma should be part of lore and game universe and combat logging and exploiting is not part game universe so it shouldn't affect karma.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
If the pirate's demands were transmitted using a derivative of the cargo scan output then it could be formalised to an extent - it would also remove the language barrier from text comms.
Nobody, but the alternative is that piracy ceases to exist as viable game play unless they introduce some kind of alternative repercussions. The whole point is that the pirate represents a threat and gives an ultimatum, cargo or else.
Without the "else", no pirate game play.
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Agree and I like that idea, but that is a somewhat more complex system than just a deceleration of piracy.
its cargo or i take it by force. shoot his ship to crap without making it explode. you got the tools for it.
if you think its to much risk for yourself - then do that in an anarch system, that IS already excluded from karma in sandro's suggested system.
.. and then what, if they still refuse to drop cargo? do you a) just let them go or b) take a negative karma hit for murder?
That's what we're talking about here, how piracy can remain viable without being detected as murder by the proposed karma system.
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Hello Commanders!
Thank you for all the constructive criticism and appraisal (remember, attack the argument, not the speaker).
First the CAVEAT: I am not saying when this system is coming, or even that it is coming at all. I am merely discussing the pros and cons of what it might be able to address, and what it would not. It's also not "the fix" to crime and punishment, just one of several options.
However, it’s pretty cool to chew the fat over various development concepts and gather very useful feedback from you folk. We all want the same thing, for the game to be as good as it can be, and it’s important that we try to look at issues from as many different viewpoints as possible.
To address a few persistent issues that I've seen:
* "You are going to ban people for playing your game"
That's not the intention. We want to try our hardest to let Commanders enjoy the game how they want to. However, and it's a big however: Open is a shared game space that we want as many folk to enjoy as possible. We have to decide what is best for the greater good when there are conflicts of interest between Commanders. Just because there are Private Group and Solo mode, does not necessarily mean that Open should be without codes of conduct. We don't tolerate racism, for example.
And there’s the rub: should we tolerate psychopathic/unpleasant behaviour against Commanders (this isn't an issue with AI ships)? Because if we really thought that this behaviour was beyond the pale, then why would we not prevent/punish it?
As I've tried to make to make clear, we currently believe in using in-game sanctions whenever possible. That is to say, we would like to see a system where players can act in unpleasant ways, but where there are suitably appropriate consequences for those actions. For example, the concept of removing any reduction in re-buy costs ( basically meaning you would have to pay the whole amount for a destroyed ship) would, if we decided to use it as a punitive measure, only come at the end of a long, long road of wanton offences.
* "You are going to punish me the moment I step out of line"
No. This is simply not the case.
If we were to do a karma system, it would fundamentally be based on tracking behaviour *over time*, so infrequent indiscretions would factor in only as data points. They still would carry any appropriate immediate penalty, such as gaining a bounty, of course. When actions were logged, they would not instantly dump “bad points” on Commanders, they would affect the power of a positive or negative trend.
Importantly, we would look carefully at each behaviour we wanted to track, and give it its own specific values for karma loss/gain. This value could then be modified by tracked trends of all parties involved that were relevant (to the account level, to mitigate undesirable behaviour keyed off resetting Commanders), interrogating concepts such as how “new” each participant was to the game, what they had been doing in the past, their current karma status, their relationships (including wing members, friends present etc.)
We would also have a wide range of punitive measures to draw upon, and importantly scale up or down, so a Commander would always experience a descent and have plenty of time to moderate their behaviour based on what consequences they were prepared to accept.
* "There's no way you can tell the difference in power/ability/intent using karma"
It's undeniable that working out relative power and reading intent from tracked values is a challenge. But I suspect that the success rate we can achieve would make it more than worth the effort.
It should be made absolutely clear that a trend tracking system would not be a panacea. We are not against looking at the power of authority vessels, system security etc.
But we think that potentially karma could help in a lot of instances that currently are not being addressed because of the long view it would take, assuming that there aren’t horrible holes in it, which is where this kind of discussion comes in very handy. So once again, thank you for your continued interest, passion and feedback!
Thank you for all the constructive criticism and appraisal (remember, attack the argument, not the speaker).
First the CAVEAT: I am not saying when this system is coming, or even that it is coming at all. I am merely discussing the pros and cons of what it might be able to address, and what it would not. It's also not "the fix" to crime and punishment, just one of several options.
However, it’s pretty cool to chew the fat over various development concepts and gather very useful feedback from you folk. We all want the same thing, for the game to be as good as it can be, and it’s important that we try to look at issues from as many different viewpoints as possible.
To address a few persistent issues that I've seen:
* "You are going to ban people for playing your game"
That's not the intention. We want to try our hardest to let Commanders enjoy the game how they want to. However, and it's a big however: Open is a shared game space that we want as many folk to enjoy as possible. We have to decide what is best for the greater good when there are conflicts of interest between Commanders. Just because there are Private Group and Solo mode, does not necessarily mean that Open should be without codes of conduct. We don't tolerate racism, for example.
And there’s the rub: should we tolerate psychopathic/unpleasant behaviour against Commanders (this isn't an issue with AI ships)? Because if we really thought that this behaviour was beyond the pale, then why would we not prevent/punish it?
As I've tried to make to make clear, we currently believe in using in-game sanctions whenever possible. That is to say, we would like to see a system where players can act in unpleasant ways, but where there are suitably appropriate consequences for those actions. For example, the concept of removing any reduction in re-buy costs ( basically meaning you would have to pay the whole amount for a destroyed ship) would, if we decided to use it as a punitive measure, only come at the end of a long, long road of wanton offences.
* "You are going to punish me the moment I step out of line"
No. This is simply not the case.
If we were to do a karma system, it would fundamentally be based on tracking behaviour *over time*, so infrequent indiscretions would factor in only as data points. They still would carry any appropriate immediate penalty, such as gaining a bounty, of course. When actions were logged, they would not instantly dump “bad points” on Commanders, they would affect the power of a positive or negative trend.
Importantly, we would look carefully at each behaviour we wanted to track, and give it its own specific values for karma loss/gain. This value could then be modified by tracked trends of all parties involved that were relevant (to the account level, to mitigate undesirable behaviour keyed off resetting Commanders), interrogating concepts such as how “new” each participant was to the game, what they had been doing in the past, their current karma status, their relationships (including wing members, friends present etc.)
We would also have a wide range of punitive measures to draw upon, and importantly scale up or down, so a Commander would always experience a descent and have plenty of time to moderate their behaviour based on what consequences they were prepared to accept.
* "There's no way you can tell the difference in power/ability/intent using karma"
It's undeniable that working out relative power and reading intent from tracked values is a challenge. But I suspect that the success rate we can achieve would make it more than worth the effort.
It should be made absolutely clear that a trend tracking system would not be a panacea. We are not against looking at the power of authority vessels, system security etc.
But we think that potentially karma could help in a lot of instances that currently are not being addressed because of the long view it would take, assuming that there aren’t horrible holes in it, which is where this kind of discussion comes in very handy. So once again, thank you for your continued interest, passion and feedback!
how can someone refuse to drop his cargo?
I suppose this could be a simplistic solution, but if ships collide, add the rebuy value of all ships involved in the collision to the rebuy value of those ships for the next five minutes of game time or next rebuy - whichever is shorter.
Example. Eagle suicide rams a Cutter on purpose to trigger the station attack. Eagle pilot's rebuy value is increased by the Cutter's rebuy value, and the Cutter's rebuy value is increased by the Eagle's. This would make it prohibitively expensive to grief people via ramming, as it's no longer a matter of a tiny rebuy to grief a large ship. You ram a Cutter, you're facing a **really** large rebuy, so you'd better hope it doesn't die as a result.
The main issue I can see with this is making sure that the target dies before the griefer rebuys.
Since both parties are responsible (even in accidents, both parties were speeding), I think it's only reasonable that both have to pay the insurance for both ships.
Example. Eagle suicide rams a Cutter on purpose to trigger the station attack. Eagle pilot's rebuy value is increased by the Cutter's rebuy value, and the Cutter's rebuy value is increased by the Eagle's. This would make it prohibitively expensive to grief people via ramming, as it's no longer a matter of a tiny rebuy to grief a large ship. You ram a Cutter, you're facing a **really** large rebuy, so you'd better hope it doesn't die as a result.
The main issue I can see with this is making sure that the target dies before the griefer rebuys.
Since both parties are responsible (even in accidents, both parties were speeding), I think it's only reasonable that both have to pay the insurance for both ships.
do think you could use a deep learning and neural network for the detection?
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i mean, having one neueral net learning to decide which ship (and pilot) was "overpowered",
and one to decide the impact on karma of the involved player.
i also think, using such a network would be best to detect the difference between an unwanted disconnect, and a forced one - using the data collected from that commander
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Yes, completely. Murder is murder.
There should be dire penalties to Karma for killing someone who's clean. Traders SHOULD be able to fly in secure systems with the expectation that they're very unlikely to be killed because of this - and so yes, they may choose to risk trying to run away in high sec systems. (is the potential cost of damage high enough?)
But traders are also more likely then to comply in low-sec/anarchy regions because they would know they otherwise fair game.
I think there is confusion here whether karma will be some all encompassing feature that will also prevent anti-social game play (i.e. griefing, deliberate & repeated PK / stream disruption that's just for "fun" at the expense of other players game time/experience)
I think that's a more severe issue but one that ultimately needs to be dealt with via "report user" and handled out of game if there is evidence to back it up.
I hope that the "karma" system being considered will just be applied to general game play. i.e. if the commander kills a ship, player or NPC then their karma is decremented, similarly if they get caught smuggling. Bounty hunting would be one way to increase karma as would some of the charity missions such as the delivery ones - it's important though that these are missions that can't be exploited with one ship kill counting to multiple missions (hopefully a fix is on the way for that) or the donations - it should be something that takes time to build back up.
Obviously if a commander is engaging in an anti-social play-style then they'll be taking a karma hit anyway and having to deal with the consequences of system security etc - which hopefully will be upgraded to deny docking, kill on sight, and as others have suggested, block access to systems via an extension of the permit system. (perhaps player is outlawed in system for x days)
So a player would start at 0 karma, and doing good things increase it, doing bad things turn it negative.
Stations should then take karma into account when offering missions - e.g. giving the commander unique cargo to transport somewhere probably shouldn't be given to a known scumbag when it's a legit mission. On the flip-side, highly illegal missions shouldn't be offered to players with god-like levels of karma!
And where high-sec stations should greet commanders who don't have too low a level of karma, there should be the flip side of that behaviour in anarchy systems at pirate bases. If you rock up there as a celebrated bounty hunter / philanthropist then you should get a hostile reception and told you're not welcome. And these bases should be hubs for illegal goods and missions - again access determined by just how notorious your commander is!
I'd say keep it simple in the first iteration and then build on it.
But we desperately need SOMETHING to start with!
Obviously there are kinks to be worked out with consentual PvP battles, and even "games" such as racing that might involve collisions and require the 'report crimes' option to be off. Perhaps that can be extended so that it's locked for the duration of an instance, and shows in the contacts list to make it easier to confirm everyone is using it? Maybe it needs more than that, but again, it'd be a start?
If the player combat logs during this state, a counter should increase and ideally then give other players away to see it- let it be visible who is dropping out of fights. (and no, I don't know where in the cockpit you'd show this, but perhaps some indication on the contacts list, or details option if you select the user in contacts?)
And yes, a "combat log" might not be the user's fault - but then if it's frequent enough, it's still just as unfair and disruptive to the other players as if it was deliberate. At least if there were visible stats, other players can make an informed decision whether they are likely to 'disappear' part way through. Counts would degrade back towards zero over time (played, in game time that is)
And when we've gotten Karma, this is even further OT I suppose, but I'd like FD to get around to adding the multiple commander slots that were promised and have been "on the list" for over 2 years now. One commander can't cover all play-styles!
I'd like to be able to use my pirate start position from KS and play as one. I'd like to have an alt who's a bounty hunter and focuses more on combat. I'd could then let my main character stick to trading or head off on long distance exploration trips.
This would not only open up the game for everyone to "play their way" but would solve one of the big problems right now - that you can't just pick the game up and play how you want to. How many people think "Oh, where did I leave my commander?" before logging on and then decide that actually they don't feel like continuing that and so don't bother? (that can't be good for retention).
[edit] I see I got ninja'd. Must type faster!
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Here's the thing about neural nets and the almighty algorithm: They don't bloody well work. Even google's search algo relies on a team of people feeding it important human context that a machine is simply incapable of grasping. It's also why youtube's recommendation system is so bad, an algorithm can never know the context of a click, or in the case of this game, a murder.
A karma system must not be allowed to decide punitive action on a player's account in this game, abso-bloody-lutely not. Hell no. Not in a million years. Sandro don't even go there.
What it can do is, like GTA online's karma system, be used to inform other players about the relative hostility of a commander. In GTAO if you kill a lot of people your player icon on the minimap shows up with a redder tint than others, so that other players know to avoid you if they don't want a fight, or track you down if they do. The red tint slowly fades back to white if you go a long period of time without killing another player.
There was, at one time, a system in place that would automatically send people to "bad sport" lobbies if they misbehaved too much, and you know what? It was universally hated. Because the game couldn't tell why one player killed another people would often be sent there for jokingly killing their friends, cutting them off from them in the process. It was a horrible plan and they eventually changed it into the current passive warning system that it is today. Take heed Sandro, and don't repeat Rockstar's mistakes. Set up karma if you want to but use it to inform players, not punish them.
Disabling ships is dangerous (accidental murder = bad karma). Using hatch breakers works "ok", I believe, it's still not great right? So, what if you want more cargo than those methods will reliably provide? The answer is you ask for it and in an Elite universe where pirates seldom/never kill commanders who comply with this demand you would likely get what you asked for. Currently, all it takes is one murderhobo to put a trader off complying with any demands, no matter the cost to themselves. People are illogical like that.
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Eagle pilot -> takes the free sidewinder.
Goose4291
Banned
Yes you should, because as per your own marketing:
Random killing of players in a game where not only is it allowed, but is encouraged by the marketing, shouldnt result in shadowbans/out of game punishment and doesnt fall into the category of online harrassment/bullying, no matter how much certain people on this forum attempt to square peg into a round hole it into that category.
Ive been critical of this games development but have stood by it since day one, despite the broken promises of offline and Iron man mode, and generation of a community where content is awarded to groups based on their special relationship with you as developers rather than actual in game achievements. I even pretty much let the whole god-modding the BGS and undoing peoples work slide, but this idea Sandro is beyond the pale for me, as no doubt it is to those of us who play open in its current state.
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I think the most important part of any system you develop should be aimed at protecting new inexperienced players. You guys know where the starting systems are, you can see gametime logged (An important indicator that may work much better than PF rank) so anything you implement should account for these factors as well. So yes, I do think it is important to balance out and protect from heavily overpowered attacking weaker ships - but that shouldn't be the key focus, partially because some highly experienced commanders may still fly ships that would be considered weak, because it suits their profession.
Would there only be a single karma value per commander, which determines consequences on a linear scale?
It seems that several commanders would like to see undesired criminal behaviour treated differently/individually from logging out during combat.
Considering a notorious criminal commander who never terminates the game to avoid ship destruction - any consequences such as higher insurance cost or being barred from anything but anarchy ports is likely an achievement.
A clean commander who actively avoids ship destruction by terminating their game whenever they meet the above likely shouldn't be judged on the same scale. (maybe similar consequences, but definitely not the same)
And the worst offenders doing both of these things probably shouldn't be matched up with anyone. They aren't fun for anyone to meet.
Mods, as a public service I ask that this thread is in some way retitled and moved to Dangerous Discussion.
I mean no disrespect to the OP but the fact is that this thread has taken the unexpected turn of becoming the forum's greatest source of engagement on its hottest topics (C&P/Logging/Karma) by the Lead Designer ... and yet it is currently languishing in the relative backwater of the Suggestions sub-forum under the original title of 'Deliberate Ramming'.
One of the reasons that it has generated such response here is because of the DevTracker site and another is that it received an ultra-high profile link on reddit yesterday. But for most of the Dangerous Discussion users, they just won't even know it's here.
Cheers
I mean no disrespect to the OP but the fact is that this thread has taken the unexpected turn of becoming the forum's greatest source of engagement on its hottest topics (C&P/Logging/Karma) by the Lead Designer ... and yet it is currently languishing in the relative backwater of the Suggestions sub-forum under the original title of 'Deliberate Ramming'.
One of the reasons that it has generated such response here is because of the DevTracker site and another is that it received an ultra-high profile link on reddit yesterday. But for most of the Dangerous Discussion users, they just won't even know it's here.
Cheers
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But there comes a point where there is a difference between flying about killing other players as you play the game, and deliberately camping out at locations purely to cause grief to others - i.e. shooting srvs/empty ships at popular ruins sites, or heading over to remote destinations simply to intercept explorers that might have spent many days/months making their way to. The later examples do qualify as harassment and it's toxic to the game.
And BTW - the advert that you guys keep trotting out says "Commanders" - it does not say "Players". So playing the game purely to hunt down and kill players is NOT the game that was advertised. (Bounty hunting missions = hunting Commanders for example)
But FD should let the players decide if they want to be identifiable as a human vs NPC tbh.
FD absolutely should punish anti-social players who set out to harass and spoil the game for others.
There are people in this very thread who are known to do that and have basically admitted it in their answers. i.e. the ruins example, destroying players in their SRV's under some guise of RP but as they've said, that wasn't really what they were doing at all.
For the good of the game this kind of thing does need to be stopped and a line drawn.
If there is evidence and it can be dealt with quickly, temporary ban for a week - longer if more severe (e.g. harassment such as targeting a planned livestream purely to disrupt, camping out to kill commanders as they arrive at the end of extended journeys etc) and permanent bans if repeated.
Ultimately though, this has to be a manual process I think via report user - it's not enough that something happened, the person impacted needs to make a complaint if they feel it's warranted... The context of the situation and what happened isn't something that any automatic system can capture.
Things like camping at CG system just to kill commanders trying to participate could be viewed as RP but often it's not. However, if the karma system means that they eventually get refused docking, kill on sight by system security around stations and perhaps eventually exclusion from the system for x hours or days, then that sort of thing should be self-limiting.
This would also limit issues in starter systems too.
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