Yeah, but they're improving it wrong.One of the bits of SDC propaganda that often makes it into the general gaming press is that their exploits (read that anyway you choose) force FD into improving the game. Isn't that what is happening here?
Deliberate Ramming
- Thread starter shadragon
- Start date
PF members are almost certainly far below a single percent of the victims of PF pilots.
If the Pilot's Federation is trying to attract new members by advertising possible immunity to the depredations of other members, that would be an even more blatant provocation than I was implying. They'd go from an organization that has started to have a tarnished reputation of policing it's members, to one that was actively shielding it's members from retaliation/justice for their transgressions against non-members. The former wouldn't likely be tolerated much longer, but the later, in any sensible setting, could well precipitate the collapse of the organization.
regarding powerplay -
why would i join a pvp centric game mechanic, where i am marked as "come get me - lawless" in a majority of the populated space,
when i can get my share of "seal clubbing" already without it, without ANY consequences or.
given that, the Karma system is a bonus for existing game mechanics.
CQC unquestionable was something implemented for the X-Box release, and may eventually gain a short lived popularity with the Playstation release again.
Horizons turning into a mandatory upgrade at some point, is a reasonable development process. FDEV is no charity organisation for NEETs.
porting the game to PS4 instead of releasing another season pack is a strange and risky step => especially since the "realms" are still seperated
The whole problem space IS edge cases. The behaviours which are problems are, by their very nature, extremes (aka edge cases). So, the solution will need to be custom built to detect each of them, individually. Or rather, the system will track all the data points necessary to detect them then it will have custom logic to inspect the data points and form a view of the players Karma. Sandro already mentioned that they might adjust the weighting of various data points, so the actual Karma "value" will not be a static figure which is simply adjusted based on a single event occurrence, it will actually be the result of a calculation of the weightings over all events recorded. If, for example, Frontier decided to lower the weighting on a given event, the karma values for all pilots with those events would drop accordingly. This is why the system proposed does not, in any way, match a C&P system which would necessarily need to react to events immediately with in-game responses - or risk being totally un-immersive.
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As I, and others, have already mentioned this is a very poor "solution" to the issue. No player, or group/type of player should be forced out of Open. Open play comes with a number of benefits that everyone is entitled to. It is a shared social space and Frontier have decided to ensure it can be enjoyed by all, equally. Just imagine if the situation were reversed and the PvP players were forced to log into a separate mode, how would they feel about that?
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To re-iterate, we would all like to see a more expansive C&P system with career paths for criminals etc. What we also want is for everyone who paid to "play their own way" to be free to do so, to a reasonable degree. If this means that some players actions are curtailed because they impose upon others, then so be it, that is the nature of how a shared space operates. Your right to do X stops when it impinges on my right to do Y. That's what this is about, it's more than just a C&P mechanic, it's redressing the unbalanced situation we currently have in Open where some players have a disproportionately negative affect on the game for a large number of players.
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Absolutely love these ideas. We want these AS WELL AS a Karma system which can encourage more social gameplay.
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I think that it's good that there is a Karma and C&P update coming in the future. I would prefer it if it treated NPC's and Players as the same though.
We should also have illegal alternatives to the pilots federation which can give insurance (maybe not as good though) that are based out of Anarchy systems (ship repawn will be from those systems only).
There should be no black markets in anarchy systems, have everything saleable with highly inflated sell prices to make these places attractive to go to, but risky at the same time.
Karma can be done like ranks. It should be like a reputation, the more detected crime you commit the worse your rep gets.
Depending on rank the worse you will be treated in security systems. Constant interdictions from security vessels, refusal for docking, shoot on sight policy by stations / security ships depending on neg karma rank and security of the system.
Karma will degrade very slowly as like all rep, your rep diminshes after time that it isn't in the spotlight. Also doing positive stuff can help your karma rep, if you can get to a station to do this stuff like donation and/or bounty hunting. But it should only be able to get it in security systems and with the use of the mission board.
So commaders such as harry potter/besieger may have to do a balancing act to keep the neg Karma at an acceptable level.
All of this should also include NPC's for a better upgraded bounty hunting system using the security contact at stations instead of just bounty farming in res sites or nav beacons.
You should also get positive Karma as well, so when you have a lot of positive karma and you jump in to a pirate system then it should be a reason for a lot of ships to get on your case and try to get rid of you ASAP.
We should also have illegal alternatives to the pilots federation which can give insurance (maybe not as good though) that are based out of Anarchy systems (ship repawn will be from those systems only).
There should be no black markets in anarchy systems, have everything saleable with highly inflated sell prices to make these places attractive to go to, but risky at the same time.
Karma can be done like ranks. It should be like a reputation, the more detected crime you commit the worse your rep gets.
Depending on rank the worse you will be treated in security systems. Constant interdictions from security vessels, refusal for docking, shoot on sight policy by stations / security ships depending on neg karma rank and security of the system.
Karma will degrade very slowly as like all rep, your rep diminshes after time that it isn't in the spotlight. Also doing positive stuff can help your karma rep, if you can get to a station to do this stuff like donation and/or bounty hunting. But it should only be able to get it in security systems and with the use of the mission board.
So commaders such as harry potter/besieger may have to do a balancing act to keep the neg Karma at an acceptable level.
All of this should also include NPC's for a better upgraded bounty hunting system using the security contact at stations instead of just bounty farming in res sites or nav beacons.
You should also get positive Karma as well, so when you have a lot of positive karma and you jump in to a pirate system then it should be a reason for a lot of ships to get on your case and try to get rid of you ASAP.
I have to agree here.
@StarLightPL If you want to convince "us" (those in favour of a Karma system) that it would eliminate PvP you're going to need to provide some evidence of this. Because, when you say it (as you have been doing) my first thought is ..
The evenly matched ships restriction seems, to me, to actually improve gameplay in at least one additional way. Take a CG blockade, for example, what we currently have are new players doing these in Solo/PG, because of the gank squads of highly engineered ships patrolling in Open. Now, you're probably gonna say, that's fine .. they ought to git gud, etc. But, this situation is far from ideal from a community or game health perspective because those players simply get in the habit of flying in solo and never come back to open.
Instead, if karma prevented those highly engineered ships from targeting those new players, and instead the blockading group were required to field some newer players themselves, or fly in lower powered ships to create a "complete" blockade, this would be a vast improvement for the community/game as it would provide a fair/appropriate challenge to all, and be far more enjoyable for all.
The gank squads would still have targets, those players in Trade Cutters/Anacondas and those players defending them in Corvettes/FDLs/etc.
All that is "lost" here is the unbalanced "PvP" which, IMO, is bad for the game.
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The difference is that Karma would not, necessarily, shift for a single crime against a single commander. Instead, it would shift when a pattern of crime against commanders emerged, such that those crimes were deemed to be negative for the health of the game/community. This is the goal of the karma system, to detect and highlight players who are not "playing well with others" to some degree or other.
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+1 to all of this.
There is some overlap, WRT the actions which trigger responses/activity in C&P and the proposed Karma system, for example..
The actions which occur in-game are, in some cases, the same actions which would trigger an immediate C&P reaction (because if they didn't immersion would be broken) but might not trigger an immediate karma reaction, because the karma system requires a pattern of said behaviour before deeming it as "undesirable".
There are also other actions, more like exploits really, like combat logging which would not have an in-game C&P effect, but would have a karma effect (once sufficient data could "prove" intent). So, these are firmly in the realm of Karma only.
The most important aspect of karma is that it MUST NOT be game-able by players, or rewarding in any way. It has to be purely a deterrent to player behaviour we don't want in the Elite universe. So, all the really cool C&P improvement ideas which would provide a richer experience for players doing illegal deeds are firmly NOT part of a Karma system, for this reason.
All IMO of course.
See this, in it's various forms is a very good idea (& has been repeated many times through this thread, more or less). Extend it a little, so eventually you manage to annoy the major faction enough to start hunting you too & already you have dealt with many of the crime & consequences problems in game, using it's own mechanics. It makes piracy more interesting, meaning you can't just stick it to the ruling faction & expect them to welcome you with open arms...
With that, as much as I like it, the effect on powerplay would also be questionable, & that would be a sticking point.
What really gets my goat is when people doing these things "hide" behind the excuse that they are finding bugs and improving the game. Sure, that would be true if you did it once, recorded it, and submitted a bug to Frontier. But, by repeatedly doing it for the LOLs they're just being a jerk and ruining the game for others. By publicising it wide and far they're further ensuring more "jerks" do the same thing, ruining the game for yet more people. By doing all this they are indirectly "holding Frontier hostage" and in some cases forcing them to release a quick and dirty fix of some kind which will potentially lower the quality of the code base and result in more bugs down the line. Not to mention the fact that by forcing an immediate response you're delaying whatever cool feature was in production at the time. All in all, this behaviour is bad for the game on so many levels.
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Just checking.. but you do realise that this is exactly what the system Sandro has been proposing would do, right? It tracks data points over time and only reacts when a pattern of behaviour is detected. It would not kick in after a single offence, no matter how exploity - because it needs a pattern and a pattern needs >1 data point.
Again, this is exactly the purpose of the karma system being proposed. It tracks behaviour over time and reacts once a pattern is established. Further, because it has those data points it can be far more "certain" of intent and justified in applying a consequence.
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But, the Karma system is all about player behaviour, not commander activity. So it should, naturally, be tied to the player over multiple commanders. I tend to agree however, that it needs to reset for a new commander because there is a valid case where the player might decide to "play nice" in response to the karma system (best case scenario) and why not allow them a clean slate to do it on.
However, I think the previous commanders karma level ought to be recorded and then a trend over multiple commanders can be detected. In fact, I think this NEEDS to be the case because it's a fairly simply matter for a player to be "naughty", get bad karma, reset their save, have their group/wing/friends get them back into a decent ship (one at least capable of being naughty in, again) then rinse and repeat. Sure, engineering will take time, and this process is much harder than they would have it currently, which is still an improvement, but it seems trivial to track karma levels for each commander and further improve the behaviour tracking in this way.
Javert
Volunteer Moderator
So a disconnect of your client, during combat, with other players present, would give negative karma?
Now this is controversial because it may not be your fault - we even heard earlier on this thread about someone who was in a PVP fight and their client crashed.
That said, I'm think I would probably be in favour of repeated disconnects in the above situation impacting karma - it's easy for me to say that as I have a good connection. I would actually be inclined to track this as a separate stat rather than putting it directly into a karma score - in the ideal world, you would track the players disorderly terminations over time, and then compare it to the frequency of that happening whilst in PVP combat. Probably overkill here, but I guess my point is that only repeat offenses should reduce karma, not a single incident.
Possibly, but Powerplay needs a massive update as well to tie it into the minor factions, including missions, combat zone and better bounty hunting mechanics. If that is included then the C&P system can easily tie into powerplay very nicely
We would also need to update factions a bit as well like being able to join a faction, if that faction isn't in power we could fight for that faction through the mission system inlcuding doing some nefarious stuff, but when that faction gets into power you shouldn't have an issue as the neg rep now with a none ruling faction. This can all be tied into powerplay as well as long as the minor factions are tied to the powerplay powers as well.
(As I've said elsewhere) Personally, I would like the Karma system to be able to push Griefers, Rammers, Player Killing Pirates (not players who pirate) and Combat Loggers to be only able to play in Anarchy systems. If these type of players turn up in other systems, the security response is so strong that they'll find it to difficult to stay. It makes anarchy systems scary again for players and it fits in with the feeling of the wild west that should be in those systems. Maybe even making these 'bad karma' pilots visible on the galaxy map in Medium/High level systems to other players because (alpha 2 players will remember) the power of the Posse (That should appeal to anyone who wears a cowboy hat and a space loach) is quite potent. It goes without saying that a Bad Karma Pilot cannot collect any bounty from another Bad Karma pilot or if the player scoring the kill has been in a wing/crew with the Bar Karma Pilot. Hopefully this will reduce people collecting bounties off their mates.
If a player behaves themselves for a while, then the karma improves to the point where they are allowed back into the other systems but kill another player and back to the anarchy's you go; all handled within game mechanics and without the need for shadow banning.
Obviously, it should be pointed out that, Combat Zones, Anarchy Systems, players who kill while defending themselves, Powerplay actions and maybe some CGs should be exempt from the Karma rules. (I really do want CGs to have a little more of a 'breaking the siege' feel to them, where players can set up some kind of blockade to try and slow down the other side).
It goes without saying that a Bad Karma Pilot cannot collect any bounty from another Bad Karma pilot or if the player scoring the kill has been in a wing/crew with the Bar Karma Pilot. Hopefully this will reduce people collecting bounties off their mates.If a player behaves themselves for a while, then the karma improves to the point where they are allowed back into the other systems but kill another player and back to the anarchy's you go; all handled within game mechanics and without the need for shadow banning.
Obviously, it should be pointed out that, Combat Zones, Anarchy Systems, players who kill while defending themselves, Powerplay actions and maybe some CGs should be exempt from the Karma rules. (I really do want CGs to have a little more of a 'breaking the siege' feel to them, where players can set up some kind of blockade to try and slow down the other side).
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No. Because that's ONE event.
This is the point I think some people have missed. Sandro mentioned being able to adjust the weighting of various data points, implying that the karma score is not simply a fixed value that gets + or - kicks when individual events occur. Instead it's calculated (and probably cached) based on the data collected. This is smart, it means that the data is always present to be analysed and improvements can be made to the weighting and algorithm to more accurately detect the things they want to discourage.
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All interesting ideas. But this is the realm of C&P and general gameplay.
Karma is proposed as a separate system intended to reduce undesired player behaviour: such as repeated and deliberate targeting of weak players by the powerful (ganking some call it), repeated abuse of exploits (combat logging, station ramming etc.) and other behaviours detrimental to the player experience that FD want to achieve.
Those players who do this undesired behaviour hate the idea of a Karma system because they can see how effective it could be. They would much rather have the problem "solved" by changes to C&P because they know it can be gamed and leave them unaffected to carry out their undesired behaviour. If a Karma system is inevitable they would much rather it was tied into the development of general C&P improvements because feature creep and added complexity both delays any implementation and makes it easier to find exploits to undermine the system.
I'm sure it's not your intention, but by conflating Karma with C&P you play into the hands of those who seek to undermine any Karma system. They do not want these changes to the game,, that improve the game for the general player base, because they understand that it would affect their ability to carry on with their undesired behaviour.
But that is what it would do surely. It would deter combat logging, as you want the griefer/pirate/killer or whatever you want to call them to get the negative rep. If you combat log, they won't. Station ramming will be a tough one, but as this is usually done by people that like to kill, then surely they will have negative rep anyway and the stations and security ships may not like them in the area anyway.
There is also another thing that could be added into stations. As soon as you dock a forcefield is put over your ship from the station protecting your ship so that other ships cannot ram you while docked. As soon as you undock the forcefield comes off and you are free to leave.
We could also have a mixture of the two as well to deter the undesired behaviour. No reason why they should be completely seperate.
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its no overkill to log any pvp fight that is happening, and then run the logs through a neural net to determine if its a notorious combat logger, or if its due to his bad connection. thats why you can't make this a black/white system.
if i would implement the karma system, i would have it running beta on the live server for two months for the deep-learning process, without telling the player.
the same algorithm could also rate players combat ability more accurately then the current combat rank that is anything close to representative of ones combat skills (after all it just counts kill participations)
My understanding is that repeat offences are exactly what the Karma system would be looking at.
Tracking different behaviours separately is a good idea. A player who is managing their Karma level by indulging in occasional attacks on much weaker players shouldn't find themselves accidentally triggering a Consequence because their internet went down once during a fight. However different factors can still contribute to an overall Karma level. Repeated noob ganking and repeated combat logging should contribute to an escalated worsening of Karma.
I have personal experience of a poor internet connection affecting my play. My ADSL has been out for 15 days now - engineer number 6 is arriving this afternoon.
This leaves me having to use the 3G connection on my phone. I've tried multiplayer but P2P connections cannot hold up. It's not fair on other players for me to be continually winking in and out of existence. This is true whether I'm trying to play with friends in a private group or in Open where I might cause severe emotional distress to a PVPer. So for now I'm stuck on my own in SP and I'm surprised how well the game holds up with a bad connection. Turns out you can play SP with pings as bad as 4 seconds! All the flying and NPC stuff is done client side. The bit that seems to affected the worst is loading the mission board.Sorry, drifting off topic. Back to the great Karma debate...
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Probably much simpler to count the number of not-in-danger disconnections since the last in-danger disconnection, along with total disconnections of each type - to build up a history of the player's connection.
Well this is an incredibly smarmy post. Either we agree with you or we're unsuspecting dupes. "If you don't agree with me, the terrorists win." Did it ever occur to you that a good C&P system would include all the features of the Karma system, but you know, not as a magical meta fairy floating above everybody's head? The problem is with the C&P system. With the exception of combat logging, which is literally a meta-action, all the actions are in game, and should be dealt with in universe.
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