Deliberate Ramming

[Gunnet]

C&P is the place for any perks of roleplaying a criminal. A karma system is for deterring/punishing unacceptable behaviour, and would be completely undermined by making it potentially desirable to have low karma.

Edit: Started writing this post before Ant's post went up. So while it's relevant to that, it wasn't directed specifically at you

 

[Obsidian Ant]

C&P is the place for any perks of roleplaying a criminal. A karma system is for deterring/punishing unacceptable behaviour, and would be completely undermined by making it potentially desirable to have low karma.

Edit: Started writing this post before Ant's post went up. So while it's relevant to that, it wasn't directed specifically at you

I'm not sure I completely follow. How could one be a criminal, without also having a low karma?

 

[bitstorm]

Gotta be honest I feel this is all becoming a bit confused.

Surely the intention is to penalise the following :

- CMDR in engineered Corvette kills newbie Sidewinders in Eravate
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire on stations to get an insta-kill on the helm
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire off all the heatsinks for an Explorer 25KLY from a station
- CMDR drops into the Alien Ruins and starts killing prone unarmed Explorers in their SRV

But we are talking about turning it into a valid career path?

Karma / C+P these are different things. Yes there is a degree of overlap but the primary focus surely is on players that grief/troll and enjoy ruining people's day because they can.

Conflating the two I don't think is going to be that helpful.

For instance perhaps Karma should persist over CMDR save resets, perhaps C+P shouldn't.

Perhaps Karma should influence your P2P matchmaking priority, or if you are matched with similar low karmas, maybe C+P shouldn't.

I would like to see both a Karma and a C+P system.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Gotta honest I feel this is all becoming a bit confused.

Surely the intention is to penalise the following :

- CMDR in engineered Corvette kills newbie Sidewinders in Eravate
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire on stations to get an insta-kill on the helm
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire off all the heatsinks for an Explorer 25KLY from a station
- CMDR drops into the Alien Ruins and starts killing prone unarmed Explorers in their SRV

But we are talking about turning it into a valid career path?

Karma / C+P these are different things. Yes there is a degree of overlap but the primary focus surely is on players that grief/troll and enjoy ruining people's day because they can.

Conflating the two I don't think is going to be that helpful.

For instance perhaps Karma should persist over CMDR save resets, perhaps C+P shouldn't.

Perhaps Karma should influence your P2P matchmaking priority, or if you are matched with similar low karmas, maybe C+P shouldn't.

I would like to see both a Karma and a C+P system.

Ahhhh, yep - this makes perfect sense.

 

[Robert Maynard]

I'm not sure I completely follow. How could one be a criminal, without also having a low karma?

Against NPCs - Sandro has talked about the karma system being primarily related to player/player interactions.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

It would be a huge missed opportunity if FDev didn't introduce a recognised Outlaw/Criminal archetype on the back of the karma system, with mechanics, missions, rewards, repercussions and danger.

This game is crying out for gameplay. There it is.

 

[Mordredd]

This is a great thread, thanks for all the updates Sandro!

Seconded!

Big and contentious threadnaught's can be painful at times, but its full of really good constructive posts (for the most part) and so many people are contributing that it can only be good for the community and the issue itself.

One question I have, is that so far all (most?) the suggestions seem to focus on punishment. I'm wondering if you are considering any incentives for outlaw players?

Yes! we want some intergalactic naughtiness in our space lives and one of the things that comes up alot in the other related threads is piracy should pay and same with bounty hunting naughty players. It's a good opportunity to fine tune the details to make it pay on a par with other activities like trading.

Karmic wise I think Sandro said interdicting was just a fine and not bad karma. The occasional space death from piracy gone awry wouldnt likely be significant amounts of bad karma and deaths in piracy is not 100% required as proved in this great post from Hercules showing off the improved hatchbreakers https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...y-is-just-about-perfect?p=5474942#post5474942.

love the vid's (we all do)

 

[besieger]

This is a great thread, thanks for all the updates Sandro!

One question I have, is that so far all (most?) the suggestions seem to focus on punishment. I'm wondering if you are considering any incentives for outlaw players?

Maybe players with a negative Karma, are allowed to dock at pirate / criminal outposts bases that are off-limits to regular players? Maybe such players can gain access to hatch breaker limits that are "better" than the ones everyone else can buy? What if players with a negative Karma get access to a "modules / ship black market"?

My point isn't to reward "criminal" players...but rather recognize it as a valid play style. The punishments you describe go a long way to bringing protection to non-criminal players, and those rules would also create a lot of safer star systems. However might not, punishment for negative Karma - without also offering incentives for "being a criminal", might essentially totally destroy any crime-based play styles?

Oddly surprised to see you going to bat for our team, nice balanced response assuming your play style, to add though I would like to see "incentives" for criminal players but also have the same for lawful players. perhaps even certain modules?

 

[Martian Successor]

2 Questions to Sandro. Apologies if this has been covered already.

Are FDev aware of certain C&P and Karma concepts from Star Citizen's beta such as the below:

Just because he wants to play a game without griefers, doesn't mean he's capable of making such a game. Can't watch the video right now (at work), but I wonder what Roberts said - he's got far more effective anti-griefing mechanics in his buggy alpha than Braben's finished Rev.2 game does.

Edit: I figure someone's going to ask what those are, so here we go (there may be more, I typically don't play as a bad guy so I might be missing some):

- The game implements no-fire zones as places where your guns don't work at all
- Players have a crime stat that goes up when you attack someone, the only way to make it go down is to go to a special security space station and hack a terminal. Everyone knows about this, so that station is a popular pvp spot.
- Even if you decide to stick with your crime stat, the person with the worst stat is tagged as "public enemy" and shows up on everyone's radar, with a mission to kill him.
- If you have any bad rep at all and you get killed, you respawn at Grim Hex, a bandit base which is far from the lawful bases and unmarked on the map - still with your bad rep, there's no suicidey trick here. This base has similar facilities as the lawful ones, and it looks like a bandit base should as well.

Those go a fair way towards guiding the more aggressive players towards being "legit" outlaws rather than a nuisance to the other players. I see absolutely no reason why FDev can't implement something similar.

Any criminal activity should remain on the character and not be able to be wiped out quickly. This should also be a two way street. Criminals get persecuted in High Sec systems and Good guys get jumped in Anarchy space.

Completely agree - PF members being essentially immortal is part of the lore, so it makes no sense that the legal system would pretend that spaceship destruction means death and so a clean slate. What I really like about the way that SC does it is that cleaning your legal status is handled in-game in a way that encourages PvP - of the people you meet in the security outpost, 99.9% of them will be either criminals or bounty hunters. And if you get killed while resetting your status (which means being a sitting duck for a number of seconds that depends on that status), you have to fly there all over again. That's quite a disincentive to casual ganking, you have to be committed to PKing (as in, doing it for profit or some better motive than lulz).

Oh yeah, something I forgot - in space away from the big stations, crimes get detected if there's an active security satellite nearby. These can be disabled by flying there and pressing a button, which immediately sends out a repair mission to everyone on the server, but gives you a few minutes (until some other player shows up and fixes the satellite) to do any killing you want to. So again, if you're playing an assassin you can give yourself a time window to do your deed scot-free (or pirate groups can coordinate so one group attacks ships while another prevents the satellite from being brought back online) but it's another roadblock to casual ganking. It's a very interesting twist on the idea of compromised nav beacons.



I can totally live with PK'ers choosing to stay in solo

^ Some of these concepts are quite promising in theory in my opinion and can provide a lot of inspiration for our game. For example the lovely new Datalink Scanner that we have can be put to good use in hacking security satelites or terminals on planets in order to reset a bad rep for example - these areas would become PvP hot spots. And also to temporarily disable security satellites and vice versa to reboot security satellites for a stronger security response to crimes - as the original poster says, this can be a great way to use Nav Beacons and how they can dynamically become Compromised Nav Beacons. I genuinley feel that the ideas from Star Citizen's concept encourage more varied and colourful gameplay.

Question 2: Sandro, you mention that blowing up ships nets you bad karma. So how will we hold PvP leagues and/or training sessions or defend our stations from 'clean' UA bombers? Will the 'report crimes' function play a role in this? Are we going to get bad karma for frequently training with friends and having matches with our friends and allies or preventing UA bombers and the like from damaging our minor factions?

 

[Maxmilian Czhilli]

Gotta honest I feel this is all becoming a bit confused.

Surely the intention is to penalise the following :

- CMDR in engineered Corvette kills newbie Sidewinders in Eravate
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire on stations to get an insta-kill on the helm
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire off all the heatsinks for an Explorer 25KLY from a station
- CMDR drops into the Alien Ruins and starts killing prone unarmed Explorers in their SRV

But we are talking about turning it into a valid career path?

Karma / C+P these are different things. Yes there is a degree of overlap but the primary focus surely is on players that grief/troll and enjoy ruining people's day because they can.

Conflating the two I don't think is going to be that helpful.

For instance perhaps Karma should persist over CMDR save resets, perhaps C+P shouldn't.

Perhaps Karma should influence your P2P matchmaking priority, or if you are matched with similar low karmas, maybe C+P shouldn't.

I would like to see both a Karma and a C+P system.

Yes, it is getting confused.

Criminality does not necessarily mean negative karma. Karma is only applied to PVP situations. Criminal acts against NPCs does not affect karma but should be treated the same for C&P purposes. Not all actions receive the same amount of negative karma.

Anything goes in anarchy systems.

Sandro has be describing a kind of power rating for comparing attacker and victim. Attacking and killing an equal or more powerful commander would be treated much less harshly than being in a wing of Elite FDLs and destroying a Harmless Sidewinder.

Karma has to be balanced so that player piracy is viable. Pirates should be incentivised to try and rob without destruction but given leeway to kill for non-compliance. If your piracy style is to try robbing harmless pilots in Haulers and shoot them when your done then karma will become an issue. If you rob juicy T9s and end up having to kill a few then negative karma should be negligible and easy to recover from. Karma should be manageable for pirates: it's a risky criminal behaviour and how you play it should be determined by the risks to your Pilot's Federation reputation (karma) that you are prepared to take.

Blockading is a bit more tricky and needs careful thought. But if it really is a blockade, and not and excuse to kill all and any, then a focus on the big hauls carrying hundreds of tonnes makes more sense RP wise. Big hauls in expensive ships would have a higher power rating and incur much less negative karma than killing the new guy doing his first CG in small ship.

Any karma system should be intended to lessen the effect of powerful players preying on the weak simply because it's an easy way of getting the satisfaction of a kill. I don't think it should eliminate it altogether because Open does need risk for everybody. And a karma is about balancing those risks so player killers are exposed to more themselves. You should still be able to murder-hobo the weak if you want, but there should be harsher consequences.

I know there are anguished cries from many player killers that it stops them from blazing the trail they want. But a large number of players, and it seems FD themselves, seem to be of the mind that blazing a trail of murdering the weak is far too easy, too many players are doing it, and it is negatively impacting on the overall health of the game. If FD feel the balance of play-styles needs adjusting the they have to do so by leveraging the things that players care about, such as their credit balance, ranks and precious engineered ships. For these changes too be effective they need to disincentivise some (but not all) players from behaviours that they want to reduce. If anything, the fact that many player killers are protesting the proposed changes shows that Sandro is on the right track.

 

[imski]

Oddly surprised to see you going to bat for our team, nice balanced response assuming your play style, to add though I would like to see "incentives" for criminal players but also have the same for lawful players. perhaps even certain modules?

Depends on the modules, do you want to go through another 14 balancing passes for the new gear?

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Oddly surprised to see you going to bat for our team, nice balanced response assuming your play style, to add though I would like to see "incentives" for criminal players but also have the same for lawful players. perhaps even certain modules?

I'm all about balance! I've never been against PvP and crime based playstyles in any way. If supported in the correct way, it has the potential to add huge depth to the game.

Yes, I agree having modules etc. for other play styles would also be great.

Seems I initially misunderstood that Sandro was purely talking about a karma system here. So whilst the Karma system is one area, I still stand by what I suggested for a true Crime and Punishment system!

 

[bitstorm]

Ahhhh, yep - this makes perfect sense.

Hey. Just to clarify on my "making sense".

I do not actually know, nor am I sure at this stage does Sandro. It's all just spitballing isn't it. (As Sandro keeps saying)


But I feel Karma/C+P are really two different things, and that conflating the two is likely to cause confusion and problems. Perhaps even a system that doesn't do what it's supposed to, or worse rewards behaviour the system is supposed to dissuade.

Karma is about bad karma, perhaps good too. Maybe we can see it as God at work (the Hand of Sandro), maybe you could frame it as stuff that's toxic to the game that people do for out of game reasons.

"Hey I'll fire on this station and get this guy killed then post a thread about it lol"

"Hey I'll kill myself in this Sidewinder for a small rebuy so this random guy has a large rebuy"​

While crime and punishment I see as a valid career path, with arguably perhaps even rewards and unlocks for it too (at a cost).

Karma I see as about player to player. C+P is more about player to NPC/player.

For me both would be great, but I don't know if that's the plan. And I would say proper C+P would be an increase in scope to what Frontier are trying to do.

Calling it crime and punishment as people have been seems misleading.

We will probably end up with some mix of the two or something.

 

[imski]

Rather than new kit, how about engineers that do mods tuned to more criminal pursuits?

 

[nrage]

Blockading is a bit more tricky and needs careful thought. But if it really is a blockade, and not and excuse to kill all and any, then a focus on the big hauls carrying hundreds of tonnes makes more sense RP wise. Big hauls in expensive ships would have a higher power rating and incur much less negative karma than killing the new guy doing his first CG in small ship.

Just wanted to pick this bit out and highlight it as I was thinking the exact thing myself recently.

People MUST be able to blockade with (ideally) no karma penalties BUT we also want new players to be able to enjoy CG action in open without being insta-killed by an engineered end-game ship. The application of karma and it's consequences ought to aim to achieve this goal. To this end I think the Commander power value which factors into the karma calculation needs to be visible in-game so that players can determine those suitable targets. It doesn't need to be fine grained, a simple green light/red light would work.

Note, if a group of players wants to complete a blockade they would, therefore, need to field a range of ships to allow them to engage the lower powered haulers without karma penalties.

 

[Imperial Guard]

Here is a question.

For me personally, combat in ED isn’t very exciting anyway. Basically point and click with some clunky ship systems management.

What is it that you specifically enjoy about PVP in ED?

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Repeating myself again... but for a good cause.

One question I have, is that so far all (most?) the suggestions seem to focus on punishment. I'm wondering if you are considering any incentives for outlaw players?

My point isn't to reward "criminal" players...but rather recognize it as a valid play style.

However might not, punishment for negative Karma - without also offering incentives for "being a criminal", might essentially totally destroy any crime-based play styles?

This is exactly what I have described in this very thread a few pages ago but the idea isn't new - I've written it after ED Open Livestream. And also I think focusing on "lynch the griefurz pls fdev" will kill pvp. And one less gameplay choice is never good.

C&P is the place for any perks of roleplaying a criminal. A karma system is for deterring/punishing unacceptable behaviour, and would be completely undermined by making it potentially desirable to have low karma.

Who gets to define "unacceptable"? You? Forum poll? Design committee? Besieger? I am proposing an unbiased system allowing you to blaze your own trail, this time meaningfully with long term effects.

Gotta honest I feel this is all becoming a bit confused.

Surely the intention is to penalise the following :

- CMDR in engineered Corvette kills newbie Sidewinders in Eravate
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire on stations to get an insta-kill on the helm
- CMDR multicrews so she can fire off all the heatsinks for an Explorer 25KLY from a station
- CMDR drops into the Alien Ruins and starts killing prone unarmed Explorers in their SRV

But we are talking about turning it into a valid career path?

Karma / C+P these are different things. Yes there is a degree of overlap but the primary focus surely is on players that grief/troll and enjoy ruining people's day because they can.

And why should that behaviour be specially penalised? Or rather, wouldn't it be better if that behaviour was leading down a criminal career path which would both entail the consequences but also advantages of being an outlaw. Last I checked criminals mainly do it for money and power and lead quite a rich lives constantly playing cat & mouse with the law.

Karma system is something which allows you to track users behaviour over a longer period of time. It can be easily used for both. What the majority of "lynch the griefurz fdev pls" advocates fail to see is that "killing newbies in Eravate" IS a valid gameplay choice.

What is wrong is that your actions (good or bad) CURRENTLY have no consequences. And I want it to have both upsides and downsides, and most of all MEANING. I've written this many times in this thread, any system that is designed here should be UNBIASED. I don't care if you feel its "bad" killing newbies. Some can do it because the game allows them to do it, full stop. Now what I would like to see is both consequences you propose - hi sec being more and more "dangerous" to travel in as an example, refusing docking permission... But also criminal perks, access to shady activities, murder contracts, what have you. And on the other lawful side - reduced rebuys, lucrative missions, sysauth protection etc.

As Fracktal noted a few pages ago, we would need to track two things actually:
* behaviour (as in roleplay/career path tracking)
* exploit tracking (combat logging, grief-winding, breaking the TOS in general)

I am vehemently against a biased system which is a crutch for not having a valid career path with all its roses and accompanying thorns. Why should I play the "good way"? What is "good way"? Also why it is limited only to commanders and not in-universe (so tracks npc killers as well)?

The system outlined by Sandro is a "behave or you will be slapped by god-hand" not bringing anything in return. It only takes away a VALID gameplay choice. So even LESS depth and things to do in the game. No thank you.

It would be a huge missed opportunity if FDev didn't introduce a recognised Outlaw/Criminal archetype on the back of the karma system, with mechanics, missions, rewards, repercussions and danger.
This game is crying out for gameplay. There it is.

Don't forget the symmetrical career for lawful cmdr. With its own advantages and disadvantages. Also, symetrical but not identical - the perks would have to be different to make both styles interesting and not just a differently labelled c&p (copy and paste ) of the same thing.

Oddly surprised to see you going to bat for our team, nice balanced response assuming your play style, to add though I would like to see "incentives" for criminal players but also have the same for lawful players. perhaps even certain modules?

Yeah, that's what I am trying to bring to discussion since page 37, but given the pace and nature of the thread the posts get buried under tons of replies for early-page posts... Links in my sig.

As for perks and hindrances, they should be lore-friendly and make sense... Infamous Criminals hunted mercilessly in better Security systems, traders fearing Anarchies and Low-secs. Tip offs for criminals for tasty treats (a transport of palladium will be crossing from X to Y around HH:mm gametime"), perhaps better assassination missions (a certain cmdr Salami will be travelling from 46 Eridani to the bubble, 5mln Cr for her head). And for the lawful, trusty citizen - discounts for market goods, lucrative missions with huge payouts, reduced rebuys...

Also worth mentioning is minor faction rep wrt to current criminal/lawful status, for example minor faction allied with criminal will let him "sneak in if you avoid scan, if you're scanned we don't know you and will shoot you". Allied minor faction could offer special missions for lawful citizen, maybe high value important chained missions? Or make a discount on goods? Or disclose a location of known criminal with huge bounty?

I also like Truesilver's idea of using current superpower rep for the task. For example why should Empire care if I spend my time murdering Federation CMDRs in Federation systems? Bounties and crimes should have superpower jurisdictions, IDK what to do with "uncontrolled/not aligned" systems but that is an implementation detail.

Isn't that better than a "hand of god" approach?

 

[Javert]

Maybe I was completely on the wrong track here and I don't understand how Karma and C&P are unrelated - to me, Karma is one sub part of a C&P system, or possibly it should be a C&P&R system with the R being "Reward".

Anyway in an earlier post I said that this thing we are calling Karma doesn't have to be a number - it could be a dot within a circle which moves around. Different edges of the circle indicate the type of activity your character does - so 12 o'clock could be a for murder - if you murder commanders without warning or reason, it moves your dot towards 12.

6 O clock could be peaceful exploration for example - those activities moves your dot towards 6 o clock.

1 o clock would be piracy, and so on.

Other points on the circle could be for other types of activity that you do.

As you get to the edge, it is weighted as increasingly hard (but not impossible) to move back towards the middle.

Now if we are saying that this Karma is only concerned with player interaction and nothing to do with other activities, I guess my concept above doesn't work. In the above approach, murdering another player would be a bigger nudge of your karma than murdering an NPC.

I've also seen the posts claiming that karma should only be negative and that once you have an extremely negative karma you shouldn't be able to do anything to raise it again, only time would raise it. I'm not sure that would be good design - you are then encouraging people to play the game less.

Now I have to admit I don't have a lot of experience with other multiplayer games so I'm approaching this from a theoretical view and based mainly on my ED experience. We didn't generally have a karma system in Vatsim in FSX - they just boot your from the server if you don't follow the rules.

 

[nrage]

Who gets to define "unacceptable"? You? Forum poll? Design committee? Besieger?

Frontier/Sandro. It will presumably be based on their ideas of how commanders ought to behave towards each other with the end goal being to maximise enjoyment for everyone. This will necessarily involve compromise (discouraging certain behaviours) because each commander will have their own idea of "fun" and these will conflict at times.

- - - Updated - - -

Karma system is something which allows you to track users behaviour over a longer period of time. It can be easily used for both. What the majority of "lynch the griefurz fdev pls" advocates fail to see is that "killing newbies in Eravate" IS a valid gameplay choice.

No, it's not. That is to say, the community generally disagree with you on this and it seems this message has been received by Frontier and Sandro is looking into ways of discouraging people from choosing this action.

If Frontier implement a Karma system which discourages "kill newbies in Eravate" they won't be saying you cannot "kill newbies in Eravate", instead they will be saying you ought not "kill newbies in Eravate" because it's bad for the game/community as a whole. They will be saying if you continue to "kill newbies in Eravate" there will be repercussions.

Edit #2:

What is wrong is that your actions (good or bad) CURRENTLY have no consequences. And I want it to have both upsides and downsides, and most of all MEANING. I've written this many times in this thread, any system that is designed here should be UNBIASED. I don't care if you feel its "bad" killing newbies. Some can do it because the game allows them to do it, full stop. Now what I would like to see is both consequences you propose - hi sec being more and more "dangerous" to travel in as an example, refusing docking permission... But also criminal perks, access to shady activities, murder contracts, what have you. And on the other lawful side - reduced rebuys, lucrative missions, sysauth protection etc.

I think we'd all agree that more depth in terms of effects based on criminality, like criminal perks, would be a good thing. I've read all your earlier posts and there are some great ideas in there.

BUT, that's not the purpose of a Karma system Sandro is proposing (I believe). The purpose is to enforce the value judgement Frontier have decided to make WRT player activity, they have (or are possibly in the process of) decided that some player activity is bad for the community and ought to be discouraged. This will include activity that you can currently undertake in the game, which won't necessarily be prevented entirely because it is activity that can be "good", "neutral" or "bad" based on the context in which it happens. Killing another commander is not always "bad" but it is bad when they are just starting out in the game and you overpower them completely.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Frontier/Sandro. It will presumably be based on their ideas of how commanders ought to behave towards each other with the end goal being to maximise enjoyment for everyone. This will necessarily involve compromise (discouraging certain behaviours) because each commander will have their own idea of "fun" and these will conflict at times.

See its hard, really. Would my only one player kill in my career when I was undermining the Empire be bad karma? The other player was ALD, an enemy, in his/her own system. He had a bad luck on stumbling on our UM combat wing. And he was killed because of powerplay reasons. But since he was escaping after the interdiction I didn't have time for clunky chat, I just killed him. In my proposed system, I would get bad rep for that, but my powerplay contact would be able to clear me from that provided I turned in merits (and I have written that in the E open livestream commentary, linked in sig). If there were more of these enemies around we would kill them too. And reap bad rep along the way, which would make returning to the power contact tricker and more challenging. And if we got killed on the way? Sorry Winnetou, all fines to be paid, consequences etc. - as in any good spy/special ops movie - "If they catch you, we will deny that we know you".

So how I "ought" to behave when I had a valid, in-game reason for killing that Empire commander? And maybe even excluding powerplay - why someone being a staunch fed supporter shouid be punished for killing in the Empire (and vice-versa)?

In the early drafted system I would be free of consequences (powerplay killing was exempt by Sandro) allowing for a loophole - you cannot grief other commanders... unless they work for different power. That's why artificial solutions like the early draft of that system are more harm than good - as they are biased by design, and only take from the game instead of offering something in return for the limitations.