Griefing:
So, we've said we don't mind bad guys. In fact, we go further; we have bad guy gameplay options (piracy, smuggling etc.) By default, this includes psychopathic behaviour - randomly attacking other player "because you can".
We're currently looking at two different angles of defence: an in-game law system and private groups.
The in-game law system should be pretty robust. It allows plausible but strong responses from NPC factions to criminal activities (using authority ships, structures and factional bounties), as well as player-driven bounties (via the Pilot's Federation) and player bounty hunting mechanisms (e.g. broadcasting "sightings" of know villains to help player bounty hunters track them).
All of this should mean that that if you're being naughty you are generating additional challenges for yourself which will undoubtedly make the game harder in some ways (this applies equally whether you are attacking players or NPCs).
It won't guarantee safety, even though it guarantees additional challenges to the bad guys. Which I think is about right; we don't want to make being the bad guy impossible.
The second factor is our grouping mechanisms.
The way it's currently standing, players will be able to enter and leave private groups of some sort reasonably easily, so they will be able to control the level of perceived griefing they want to suffer.
I know this is a very contentious issue, which I have been wrestling with since I first came on to the project. The way I see it at the moment is pretty straightforward:
- We have players that want a range of different experiences
- All of those experiences are valid
- Some of those experiences are mutually exclusive
So my answer is to say that we will support all of them but not to the point where one player is happy at the expense of another. And a clean way to do this is by using a grouping system.
The worst case scenario here is that a player who wants to avoid an encounter will vanish into a private group. In this case, the player will be forced to escape conventionally first (via hyperspace, docking or something similar).
In this instance, the aggressor still gets some benefit - they "defeated" their prey, and we can hopefully build on this in terms of rewarding them in various ways: via reputation, which can lead to missions and events, via player bragging rights (perhaps only players that remain in the "all group" can feature in various global news feed articles) and potentially via limited physical rewards.
If players are going to live in private groups, well, that suggests that if we had a single environment they would be playing offline or not at all, so they aren't part of the equation.
Players that dip into the "all group" after farming "private groups"; there are a few things to say about this.
- They are unlikely to have as good player-vs-player skills as those who live in the "all" group day in day out.
- NPCs can and will offer appropriate risks (in fact, it would not be a lie to suggest that we *could* make NPC ships significantly nastier than any human ships in the majority of situations. Not that we will, mind. But we could), so to get a tooled up advantage such players will have been facing a appropriate threat level (basically private groups should not be considered "easy mode").
- Everyone has access to their own private group(s)
It's not perfect, but it's my best shot at the moment.
Anyway, taking these two strands into account, again, the result will again be hopefully a "very light touch".
