Elite: Harmless - Karma System aka "be the Tamagotchi" - FRESH SALT, MINED RIGHT HERE

[Robert Maynard]

Interesting that Maynard also liked the IDENT idea

Indeed, I did at that time.

However, I later changed my view - as, in my opinion, offering camouflage (i.e. a solid marker) to every player (that would remove the ability for less PvP-tolerant players to immediately discern if there was a player to be avoided) would, to an extent at least, favour those who choose to hunt players.

It's just my opinion, of course - and Frontier will do what they choose - and, I would suggest, have already done so.

 

[Vorxian]

Technically, people should be treating other ships equally in OPEN mode anyway. A python is a python, an ASP is an ASP. Who is flying them should be irrelevant.

If you need to destroy a Cutter for a mission, then the player on that mission should play a lottery roll, that the cutter they intercept isn't a fully engineered member of SDC for example.

Likewise.. someone ganking for salt at at station, has no clue who coming out is an NPC or Player... do they suicide gank an NPC? or take a chance that the 40th ship leaving may be a player..

IMO there are far more pros than any detrimental issues.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

However, I later changed my view - as, in my opinion, offering camouflage (i.e. a solid marker) to every player (that would remove the ability for less PvP-tolerant players to immediately discern if there was a player to be avoided) would, to an extent at least, favour those who choose to hunt players.

As is your right to change your mind ... Even though I voted at the time to have IDENT I found it exhilarating (back then) to see other players in game when for the majority of the time it felt empty .. then the gank squads, hard core PvP players and Salt-miners came. That by itself is perfectly OK as it's not against the ToS / Game Rules ... but it is very jarring when the only ship they go for is me in a sea of NPCs. Solo / PG isn't really a solution as it excludes me from meeting random individuals, which I want, but I am not really that bothered about direct PvP combat from a game that takes months to recover from and sadly there isn't a PvE option ... For me IDENT is perfect !

Given FDs track record I suspect the Karma system will not address anything in a meaningful or game changing way either ..

It's just my opinion, of course - and Frontier will do what they choose - and, I would suggest, have already done so.

Don't go soft on me .. of course FD will always do what they want .. that's a given!

However you're still allowed to discuss how things could be ...

 

[Jex =TE=]

Indeed.

There was a 3rd option proposed by FD ..

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...l-telling-humans-and-AI-apart?highlight=ident

Naturally there are ways of knowing someone is there, hidden or not (BW meter) but .. so what ?

Interesting that Maynard also liked the IDENT idea

That poll was before launch so why didn't we get what was voted on? Why bother with a poll if you don't go the way of the poll? That is basically how governments work - the people want X but stuff what they think, give them Y LOL

 

[-Denali-]

Technically, people should be treating other ships equally in OPEN mode anyway. A python is a python, an ASP is an ASP. Who is flying them should be irrelevant.

If you need to destroy a Cutter for a mission, then the player on that mission should play a lottery roll, that the cutter they intercept isn't a fully engineered member of SDC for example.

Likewise.. someone ganking for salt at at station, has no clue who coming out is an NPC or Player... do they suicide gank an NPC? or take a chance that the 40th ship leaving may be a player..

IMO there are far more pros than any detrimental issues.

They'd know because they'd target them and see their name... or would you remove that too?

And here's what I think would happen; Player wants to kill another player so they just go into supercruise and scan every ship. Trader isn't looking for a fight so just flies towards their destination. Trader has no idea they're being interdicted by a player. Trader dies horribly and quickly because they don't respond in an appropriate way. trader screams on forums for PVE only in open and we all just get to have this argument again.

Someone who wants to kill another player will take the time to scan everything. Someone who isn't interested in that would then have to do the exact same or enter every situation blind and ignorant of the danger. That's just a bad idea.

 

[Robert Maynard]

That poll was before launch so why didn't we get what was voted on? Why bother with a poll if you don't go the way of the poll? That is basically how governments work - the people want X but stuff what they think, give them Y LOL

.... simply because Frontier asked a question, we discussed it and gave feedback and then, as they did with all DDF topics, made the decision for themselves.

 

[Jex =TE=]

They'd know because they'd target them and see their name... or would you remove that too?

And here's what I think would happen; Player wants to kill another player so they just go into supercruise and scan every ship. Trader isn't looking for a fight so just flies towards their destination. Trader has no idea they're being interdicted by a player. Trader dies horribly and quickly because they don't respond in an appropriate way. trader screams on forums for PVE only in open and we all just get to have this argument again.

Someone who wants to kill another player will take the time to scan everything. Someone who isn't interested in that would then have to do the exact same or enter every situation blind and ignorant of the danger. That's just a bad idea.

So make the scan on player names only when you're close in like 5km's away. List players in the system though in the console so you can chat - what's the downside of that?

- - - Updated - - -

.... simply because Frontier asked a question, we discussed it and gave feedback and then, as they did with all DDF topics, made the decision for themselves.

Yeah, decisions that went against what the community wanted LOL

 

[Robert Maynard]

Yeah, decisions that went against what the community wanted LOL

168 members of the DDF voted in that poll - at the end of the Kickstarter there were about 640 DDF members and backers could upgrade their pledge or back the game using the Backers' App that existed from shortly after the KS ended until just before Alpha 1.0 launched in December 2014 so the total number that could have voted in February 2014 could well be higher than 640. In any case, the DDF formed a small portion of the community at that time.

 

[-Denali-]

So make the scan on player names only when you're close in like 5km's away. List players in the system though in the console so you can chat - what's the downside of that?

Nothing... if all you want to do is trade goods from point A to point B or honk/scan some space stuff. For everything else- pirating, bounty hunting, powerplay and a huge number of mission types that require you to find X in system Y you'd be completely destroying necessary game mechanics. 5kms, HA! You'd never find anything in a system.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Nothing... if all you want to do is trade goods from point A to point B or honk/scan some space stuff. For everything else- pirating, bounty hunting, powerplay and a huge number of mission types that require you to find X in system Y you'd be completely destroying necessary game mechanics. 5kms, HA! You'd never find anything in a system.

So then we need to find a way that keeps commanders hidden (to a point) but allows the missions to continue or we remove all hints of commanders or scrap the idea lol

 

[Zambrick]

So then we need to find a way that keeps commanders hidden (to a point) but allows the missions to continue or we remove all hints of commanders or scrap the idea lol

Again I ask, How does this have anything at all to do with a Karma system or working C&P system?

Start another thread and discuss this.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Again I ask, How does this have anything at all to do with a Karma system or working C&P system?

Start another thread and discuss this.

Errr.... this ties in directly with both of them. How can you not see that? You've never heard of the term "prevention"?

 

[-Denali-]

So then we need to find a way that keeps commanders hidden (to a point) but allows the missions to continue or we remove all hints of commanders or scrap the idea lol

I just don't see the point of bothering to make such changes. Essentially what you'd accomplish, even if you found a way to do it, would be to make interactions with other players in game less meaningful than interactions with players on the forums.

If you just want a way to talk to people without having to actually interact with them then time would be better spent in making a universal chat channel (across modes and instances). Problem solved, game unmolested. Excluding the possibility for PvP in open just destroys everything of what the other half of this conversation likes about the game. I don't think that's a fair consideration. Meaningful punishment for intentional griefing would allow for a far more diversity in play and less hostile atmosphere. I suspect looking for that to be perfect is a little like looking for a unicorn, but we'll see.

 

[Morbad]

Fighting CMDRs and Fight NPCs require 2 different skill sets and have different tactics all together. Its like saying I take part in F16 jet fights on the weekend so I can fly my 747 at my day job during the week better. 2 different animals.

PVP also is not the reason why you are able to progress faster through a self imposed reset of your save file.(Also done by such a significantly tiny part of the community that it does not matter and is a none issue.) It has more to do with overall understanding of the Basics such as Piloting, Landing, Using the Interfaces, Understanding missions systems and types etc... None of which has anything to do with PVP and is by far more important for progression than any RP event or grief killing escapade.

Just because you feel that PVP is that important does not mean its true. Its your personal opinion and there is no way to ever measure your opinion. Utilizing ones tools to maximum efficiency will increase productivity to gain experience well beyond anything PVP can hope to accomplish. That can be measured and tested because its a controlled environment.

PVP in ED, does not teach you strategy that can be utilized anywhere other than ED. Especially since ED lacks strategy almost completely. Being a so called "good" PVPer carries no additional benefit in the game or anywhere outside of the game. The Environment is too specialized and nonsensical to be of any use elsewhere.

I disagree with essentially all of that.

The whole thing should be gradual and reversible.

Why?

Decay is a bad idea

To be honest they should have to do quadruple good deeds to get the 1 point wiped not decay. Most will just fly into deep space to get rid of a bad rep otherwise which defeats the purpose.

Either system is absurd, but it would likely be far faster to farm or exploit good deeds than to wait for any reasonable decay.

Technically, people should be treating other ships equally in OPEN mode anyway. A python is a python, an ASP is an ASP. Who is flying them should be irrelevant.

This is nonsense.

I prioritize targets based on their apparent threat, like any rational mind should be doing. Often this has very little to do with the ship itself.

A combat ship piloted by a skilled CMDR (based on my prior experience with them) is automatically going to jump past ships piloted by unknowns, which are automatically going to be above ships with idiotic or non-combat loadouts, which are automatically going to be above NPCs, when it comes to my threat assessment.

Of course, I don't particularly think the game needs to, or should, automatically reveal who is a CMDR and who is not, but when that information is present, ignoring is both very difficult and very reckless.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Jex =TE=!

OK we'll quit as you obviously don't have the ability to keep up or you're deliberately trolling (and you're a Mod here).

We were talking about fixing the issue with C&P - I don't give a hoot what the KS said because we're so far off that and the DDS they're not relevant anymore. We were discussing how to fix it which I said remove the stupid ID radar giveaway. You then said "but they'll still gank you" - I then asked you how, making the point that they'd have to scan every ship in system (which nobody is going to do) and then you started this nonsense merrygoround and still haven't answered WHO exactly is going to spend hours scanning blips in the hope they find a player.

Apologies if I'm going over old ground (I haven't had time to go through this entire thread), but there are a few interesting points concerning sensor signatures that are worth mulling over (Also I got dragged into a meeting just before I was about to post, so this won’t necessarily address issues raised after your post).

The first one is that whether we like it or not, it's relatively easy to learn if there are other Commanders with you in a session, without using the signatures, so this would not be a watertight solution. Yes, you'd still have to perform the manual scans to confirm, but this isn’t exactly a difficult, or often even that time consuming task, once you know that *someone* is around and you’re not wasting your time. I'm tempted to suggest that folk who really have it in their mind to mess up someone else's day are perhaps a little more likely to "go the extra mile" to do so, though this is based on anecdotal evidence and may possibly be a bit of a red herring.

There is also an interesting point when looking at things the other way around. A Commander fearful of being attacked by another Commander currently has pretty much instant knowledge of potential threat the moment the signatures resolve. Without this, it might discourage them from Open even further, as *any* vessel could be a "ganker" (of course, there's an argument that this, more “realistic” approach could be cooler in of itself – I personally quite liked the opt-in IDENT concept that we discussed back in the day, but that's digressing a little from this topic).

For sure then, I think we can safely say that hiding Commander signatures could have a chilling effect on the most opportunistic hunter. But then it runs into conflict with another issue: one of the reasons we haven't removed this feature is precisely because many Commanders *want* to find each other - and no necessarily to attack either. So we perhaps end up in a situation where we punish everyone for the misdeeds of a few.

Either way, it’s a rational concept. And it's not mutually exclusive with other measures (such as a karma system etc.) I just thought it worth noting that it's not without its own issues.

 

[Shadowdancer]

There is also an interesting point when looking at things the other way around. A Commander fearful of being attacked by another Commander currently has pretty much instant knowledge of potential threat the moment the signatures resolve. Without this, it might discourage them from Open even further, as *any* vessel could be a "ganker" (of course, there's an argument that this, more “realistic” approach could be cooler in of itself – I personally quite liked the opt-in IDENT concept that we discussed back in the day, but that's digressing a little from this topic).

Maybe make the instant visual radar ID a pilot federation perk that can be taken away, and disable the hollow symbols at some (low) point down the karma ladder? That way, you would not punish everyone, and inconvenience a few by <handwave>severing their link with the Pilots Federation Insta-ID DataLink Service</handwave>.

 

[-Denali-]

Maybe make the instant visual radar ID a pilot federation perk that can be taken away, and disable the hollow symbols at some (low) point down the karma ladder? That way, you would not punish everyone, and inconvenience a few by <handwave>severing their link with the Pilots Federation Insta-ID DataLink Service</handwave>.

Now there's a interesting thought.

Good punishment for real griefers. My only concern is seeing that the system itself doesn't punish legitimate play.

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

Just a thought to throw in which I haven't thought through much....
What about you only see
a players signature if they are in your friends list?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Maybe make the instant visual radar ID a pilot federation perk that can be taken away, and disable the hollow symbols at some (low) point down the karma ladder? That way, you would not punish everyone, and inconvenience a few by <handwave>severing their link with the Pilots Federation Insta-ID DataLink Service</handwave>.

Interesting....

If I read this right then those with poor karma would not see CMDRs as hollow markers on the HUD - but presumably other players would continue to see the poor karma CMDRs as hollow markers on the HUD?

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Interesting....

If I read this right then those with poor karma would not see CMDRs as hollow markers on the HUD - but presumably other players would continue to see the poor karma CMDRs as hollow markers on the HUD?

I like that idea. Needs doing carefully, but worth some more thought I'd say.