Deliberate Ramming

[Phoenix_Dfire]

I'm afraid I think that if implemented it would represent a massive victory for those at the extreme anti-griefing end of the spectrum of opinion.

Very broadly speaking we are discussing three types of behaviour:

1. Clearly in-game actions such as straight up gun murder.

2. Clearly out-of-game actions such as jerking a network cable out of its socket so as to effect an immortality cheat.

I don't understand why you think CL is worse than Griefing. You're thinking it from a PVP only direction here. You ever heard of Jumpgate? Space game, trading, combat, multiplayer etc. That was a game that was destroyed by griefing. Players hanging out around the starter stations, just blowing away newbies so they can have their ship parts. Jumpgate got a bad rep for it and no-body wanted to try it.

From Frontier's Point of view, anything that puts a new player off from playing the game is going to take priority. DB quoted Richard Garriet where they worked out that one average one griefer could make up to 50 new starters quite the game. Frontier can't afford those 50 players not playing the game because on one player.

Now they have put serial Combat logging up there as the next highest cause of Bad Kama but you are not going to get Frontier to make CL more important than Griefing because its not in their interests to do so.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Greifing of newbies is most definitely the most detrimental activity to ED.

New players being murdered for no reason, without protection, or even the knowledge on how to survive, is extremely unhealthy for the game.
This should always be number 1 priority.

Combat logging is just a mild annoyance in comparison. (But still needs to be dealt with)

IMHO, and I'm also just throwing an idea around here, I'd have a tiny bubble of systems around the starting area, that all require a permit.
The permit would automatically be given too all, but you'd lose it, if your karma dropped below a certain threshold.
If you're in one of the systems when your karma drops below the limit, you'd become hostile and legal target to anyone, and denied docking privileges, or even automatically fired upon by the station, until you leave the region.
This would only apply to a select few systems near the starting system.

That'd protect newbies fairly well I think, with the exception of people with other accounts who could still build a noob whacker in a few minutes, and reset their save once they're kicked out.

 

[Imperial Guard]

Pulling the plug happens in every game - In reality there is not a lot you can do so its a minor annoyance as you say.
Kill them before they can combat log is the only real answer.

Here is a question - can a noob or a player with not much game cash yet and a basic "unengineered" ship really expect to be competitive in OPEN play PVP ?

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Here is a question - can a noob or a player with not much game cash yet and a basic "unengineered" ship really expect to be competitive in OPEN play PVP ?

Of course not.
But they might not even understand that, unlike many other MMOs, there is no system in place to protect them as a new starter.
As a newer player, you might want to ask other CMDRs for help, but not know about private groups like Mobius yet. So using solo isn't an option, especially if you don't use the forums or reddit.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

I'm afraid I think that if implemented it would represent a massive victory for those at the extreme anti-griefing end of the spectrum of opinion.

A massive victory for anti-griefing is exactly what any reasonable person, player, developer and game company should be aiming for.

But you're afraid of that. Hmmm.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

A massive victory for anti-griefing is exactly what any reasonable person, player, developer and game company should be aiming for.

But you're afraid of that. Hmmm.

I think he was implying the "extreme anti-griefing end of the spectrum", was directed towards those who want to put a stop to all nonconsensual PvP, with "PvP flags" and whatnot. I assume.

 

[Maxmilian Czhilli]

I'm afraid I think that if implemented it would represent a massive victory for those at the extreme anti-griefing end of the spectrum of opinion.

Very broadly speaking we are discussing three types of behaviour:

1. Clearly in-game actions such as straight up gun murder.

2. Clearly out-of-game actions such as jerking a network cable out of its socket so as to effect an immortality cheat.

3. In-game actions that - arguably - fall into a more grey area such as suicide station ramming so as to trigger a starport speed offender execution.

Items falling into category 3 may form an interesting basis for discussion and led to this thread.

I am dismayed by the proposition that items falling into categories 1 and 2 might be thought to fall onto the same sliding scale.

Out of game cheating is a separate and much more serious issue than purely in-game actions and should be dealt with separately and more seriously. To deal with an aggressive Cmdr and a cheat on the same scale is wrong.

Other than the opening sentence I tend to agree with you.

These behaviours should be tracked separately, and reading between the lines I think that is what Sandro is proposing. It also makes sense to me that different sanctions should be given for different behaviours.

It may make things a bit more complex but I'd like to see something like this:

• Repeat combat logging = loss of matchmaking privileges (it becomes increasingly hard to enter instances with other players)
• Repeat newbie griefing = Pilot's Federation sanctions (increased insurance costs and ship replacement sanctions)
• Repeat station ramming = loss of docking privileges (maybe security level based or within a set distance of community goals, engineers and other hotspots)

The above are just are quick examples so let's not get too hung up on them. The point being that sanctions need not be uniform and can be tailored to fit the behaviour.

But isn't this just several different systems? Well detection systems will have to be tailored anyway depending what they are looking for. But profiling can easily be handled with a single system. Profiling involves tracking the different behaviours over time, looking for patterns and deciding when sanctions should be triggered. When a trigger point is reached the profiling system will call the appropriate sanctioning system to actually implement the Consequences.

The profiling system is the heart of any Karma implementation. It can be built to track any data points given by detection systems. It can look for different patterns depending on the behaviour in question. A player could have a combat logging trend, a newbie griefing trend and station ramming trend. You could combine these individual trends into an overall player karma score which can impact on the severity of all sanctions imposed. That way a player who repeatedly combat logs, griefs new players and suicide rams in stations would be treated much more harshly than the player who just ganks newbies for lols.

Any system for tackling unwanted (by FD) behaviours needs to be able track individual players and build a profile of their behaviour. At it's core that is what a Karma system does. It doesn't have to be a simplistic score that applies to every misdemeanour; profiles can and should be more sophisticated than that. Pattern recognition is probably the hardest thing to do, but once you build the tools you can use them for analysing all sorts of behaviours. Sanctions triggered by the profiling system can be anything that FD best thinks will best reduce the particular behaviour and trigger. Using the same core system you could track players who spam local chat and impose chat activity restrictions if it was to become a big problem in the future.

There is still a lot of critical thinking that needs to be done regarding what should be tracked, how it is analysed and what sanctions are going to be most effective. But a Karma system as a tool automate those processes is neutral and I hope FD gets going on building one as soon as possible.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

,...
IMHO, and I'm also just throwing an idea around here, I'd have a tiny bubble of systems around the starting area, that all require a permit.
The permit would automatically be given too all, but you'd lose it, if your karma dropped below a certain threshold.
If you're in one of the systems when your karma drops below the limit, you'd become hostile and legal target to anyone, and denied docking privileges, or even automatically fired upon by the station, until you leave the region.
This would only apply to a select few systems near the starting system.

That'd protect newbies fairly well I think, with the exception of people with other accounts who could still build a noob whacker in a few minutes, and reset their save once they're kicked out.

my avatar comes from a game, where the DEV reacted early on against noob griefing in starting areas.
Because it was the easiest thing to do, they just dactivated non-consesual pvp alltogether (the game is EvE with robots) on the starter islands. What was initially a bandaid fix, stayed forever.
So, i know how such "isolation" areas have a really bad impact on the game.

 

[Truesilver]

A massive victory for anti-griefing is exactly what any reasonable person, player, developer and game company should be aiming for.

But you're afraid of that. Hmmm.

Actually ...

... all of my roleplay PvP background is in defending clean Cmdrs, especially new players, from attackers. I was in Adle's Armada for almost a year and before that ran a 'good guy' RP of my own.

Nowadays about 98% of my PvP is consensual duelling and the remaining c 2% is Powerplay. I have nothing to fear from anti-griefing karma.

Outside of the strict confines of PvP player group hostilities, I have never attacked a clean, unpledged Cmdr. On the contrary I devoted almost a year of my free time to defending clean Cmdrs and recruiting and organising others in their defence.

Greifing of newbies is most definitely the most detrimental activity to ED.

New players being murdered for no reason, without protection, or even the knowledge on how to survive, is extremely unhealthy for the game.
This should always be number 1 priority.

Combat logging is just a mild annoyance in comparison. (But still needs to be dealt with)

Combat logging is a straight out immortality cheat, as toxic as a hull health hack, just more difficult to detect.

Furthermore - and this is one of the points I think being overlooked - I can say from the experience I detailed above, which included being AA's only EU-time PvP Admin for a time - that the vast majority of persistent sidey-slaughterers are also persistent combat loggers. The two behaviours go hand in hand, possibly for reasons that the forum psychologists can answer but also due to sheer practicality.

If Frontier had got tough on persistent combat logging with some high profile examples two years ago, I can guarantee you that every experienced member of AA would say that this would have solved half of the issues around Eravate overnight.

Note, 'half'. Better C&P is still needed but my word, combat logging is so closely associated with attacking new players it's kind of astonishing, when you've been there and seen it for yourself week after week.

I don't understand why you think CL is worse than Griefing.

If by 'griefing' you mean gun murder, the murderer is playing the game using the ships and weapons provided, within the legal system provided. We all agree that huge changes need to be made to C&P but they are in-game changes, affecting in-game activity.

You can interdict a murderer. So can NPC's. Changes can be made to deal with murderers as murderers should be dealt with, in-game.

But an immortality cheat? Specifically, the immortality cheat known as combat logging? No, there is nothing a player or an NPC can do to a guy who immortality cheats. That isn't even playing the game. It needs to be dealt with out of game.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Combat logging is a straight out immortality cheat, as toxic as a hull health hack, just more difficult to detect.
<Snip>

I agree, combat logging is a cheat. The majority* of combat loggers are likely to be those who murder noobs too.
They're basically cheaters. They whine if anything happens to them.

So like you said, they go hand in hand.
They effectively cheat to avoid death, so they can continue murdering without consequences.

*Total guess. Lol

That said, these murder hobos killing noobs are directly effecting future sales of the game.
If ED gained a massive reputation for "being full of cheating PKers" it'd be finished.

Beyond the karma system, I've also suggested a way to ruin half of the effect of combat logging, by only allowing a CMDR to return to the mode they was in.

So, say you're off killing noobs in Eravate, in open.
A wing of Adles Armada jump in, and start handing your butt to you, and you use your very best unplugging-a-cable skills to combat log.
Safe?
Well, Adles Armada know, and you know, that if you log back in, you'll be forced back in to open, where they'll likely be waiting for you.
Or, you can not log in.

Those are the only options.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Truesilver!

Without taking anything away from your worries, which are valid, I would say this: assuming that it is relatively robust (no mean feat in of itself), I think we could all agree that a trend tracking system could be very useful for identifying both of these issues (combat logging and "grief" killing - that is, attacking clean ships when there is a massive, mechanically verifiable power differential between victim and aggressor).

So part of the discussion should be about is what kind of consequences should be applied. Because we can never *truly* know if a disconnect is deliberate or not, is it not plausible to suggest that the consequences could remain as in-game penalties? This is not a rhetorical question, it's a genuine one, especially if the result is that combat logging decreases.

Another part of the discussion is the concept of karma consequences for "grief killing". I still find the range of responses on this a little strange (I suspect because of the wide range of differing opinions): either we think it's a problem or we don't. I would like to assume that most folk do find it an issue, PvP and PvE players alike (PvE for obvious reasons, and PvP because it can clearly have a chilling effect on the population of the Open mode).

If we do make this assumption (and to be sure, that's all it is), then we have two very clear options in my opinion.

A) We prevent it.
B) We add consequences that act as a form of appropriate risk/justice

As I've stated before, I'm not too keen on option "A" unless it's absolutely necessary (and by the by, I consider a consequence so harsh as to stop a player playing the game not really any more suitable than simply preventing the activity in the first place - it's a last resort option to me). Also, note that saying "just make crime response better" is, in my opinion, not very useful. That crime response ships could do with much more teeth is not in dispute, but to make them able to prevent the crime would require instant arrival along with other magic powers

So lets say the worst punishment is that the re-buy premium becomes 50 percent of the cost of the ship fully fitted. Dramatic, for sure, but clearly no more game stopping that flying without the means to pay for a standard re-buy. More serious? Absolutely - you need staggering amounts of spare credits if you're flying a tooled up big ship. But you can make that kind of money. And this is the final level of consequence, built up over a period of time where you will have been repeatedly warned and suffered lesser penalties before hand.

Now the question I'm interested in is this (again, not a rhetorical question): Why would this drain Open of PvP players? They can still perform their "nefarious grief killing", only now there is an escalating series of challenges to consider. Not to mention that outside the power differential criteria players are still free to attack each other with abandon.

Again, these are genuine questions. Of course, if folk disagree with some of the assumptions I have to make to create this scenario (like assuming that "noob killing" is not very desirable, then clearly that puts a different spin on things, but in those cases, I'd love to know why they disagree, it will help us understand.

*** EDIT *** All of the above does not have any affect on how we deal with combat logging or other issues *currently*. This is simply hypothetical discussions. You have been warned...

Aaaaaanyways, I hope everyone has a great weekend!

 

[nrage]

Mic drop..

 

[CMDR Dahak]

Honestly, if we're not talking about a removal of insurance, just an increase, 50% seems pretty weak for a max tier offence.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Honestly, if we're not talking about a removal of insurance, just an increase, 50% seems pretty weak for a max tier offence.

A 50% rebuy is ten times the current standard rate....

 

[Ashnak]

Hello Sandro,

I didn't post in this thread yet (I think...), but your questions merit answers.

1) Worst punishment: escalate rebuy to 50% of ship value
Not drastic enough as end-of-the-line punishment. There were people who offered 1 Bn Cr. as bounty recently, and they could easily afford that. And also probably easily cheatable (Suicidewinder).

2) Would that drain PvP players? Or stop them from "griefing"?
I don't think so - see above. Seal clubbers either have enough money not to care about such paltry rebuys, or, unless you will make a proposition to attach that rebuy to the CMDR, not the ship, will find a way to drop that to an effective 10% or less (assuming Suicidewinder will clear the rebuy, and assuming that 1 time in 5 they'll get their timing wrong and actually get killed in their combat ship). Too many open ends actually to make a good guess.


Your proposal _might_ be workable as part of a more encompassing scheme - like making high security systems much more dangerous to "wanted" CMDRs plus giving the system security forces some better teeth. If you could effectively make it too dangerous for high bounty players to come into a high security system, this could actually work. That still won't keep PvP players out of open, but would restrict them to lower security systems.

 

[AndyJ]

And I bet increased rebuy won't make a jot of difference to any of the noisy Player Killers in this thread.

So I take it the wider proposals for systems responding to "criminal" players is off the table then if it'll need instant and magic responses> Despite all the suggestions earlier in the thread about how this can be implemented? (I mean, surely just flag a criminal player as hostile in a high-sec system and how long are they likely to survive?)

 

[Robert Maynard]

And I bet increased rebuy won't make a jot of difference to any of the noisy Player Killers in this thread.

Indeed - a player with billions in the bank wouldn't have much trouble running a 100M Cr. as their PK weapon of choice - the worst that could happen would be a 50M Cr. hit to their balance.

.... or they would develop highly capable meta-builds based on comparatively inexpensive ships and weaponry and limit their expenses in that manner.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Ashnak!

Good points. There are some Commanders with exceptional amounts of credits, but not everyone is super rich. In addition, this kind of penalty *every time* you lose a ship can actually add up fairly quickly if you are using extremely expensive vessels (which tend to be the ones best suited for this activity).

Of course, I also used this amount to ensure that there would be fewer cries of "that effectively stops them playing". The amount could be higher or lower. Finally, this would be on top of a range of lesser, but still notable, challenges, such as lack of docking permission except at anarchies, more powerful, determined authority vessels, auto-hostility from authorities in secure systems etc.

Also, we will (separately) be looking at closing the Suicidewinder option, so you'd always be looking at the re-buy cost of the most expensive ship used in a crime spree.

You make a point that I think is worth repeating: the idea that infamous criminals tend to spend more time in anarchies would be, in my opinion, a good thing, both contextually and for game play.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander AndyJ!

And I bet increased rebuy won't make a jot of difference to any of the noisy Player Killers in this thread.

So I take it the wider proposals for systems responding to "criminal" players is off the table then if it'll need instant and magic responses> Despite all the suggestions earlier in the thread about how this can be implemented? (I mean, surely just flag a criminal player as hostile in a high-sec system and how long are they likely to survive?)

Not at all. We are interested in giving authorities more teeth, additional challenge for criminals in secure systems etc.

It's just that to deal with this particular issue is beyond all such teeth without effectively creating a PVE zone or flag environment. Without such things, it would be next to impossible to prevent the crime, only respond to it. And at this point, you're back to consequences, which a karma system can possibly handle better.

 

[Robert Maynard]

It's just that to deal with this particular issue is beyond all such teeth without effectively creating a PVE zone or flag environment. Without such things, it would be next to impossible to prevent the crime, only respond to it. And at this point, you're back to consequences, which a karma system can possibly handle better.

There has been some discontent regarding the apparent disparity of treatment between player vs. player interactions and player vs. NPC interactions.

You mentioned earlier that the karma system is designed to deal with player/player actions - although did not seem to rule out applying a karmic hit for player vs. NPC actions. Could you please clarify if karma would be applied for player/player interactions and some player/NPC interactions or not?

Also, are you considering beefed up consequences for crime in general (that would apply regardless of the nature of the target)?