Notoriery 1 is already heavily disturbing to me

[Charles Erika von Hackbeil]

I read the whole post (just did not quote it... similarly with this post) - but the state of C&P consequences for PvP murderers is a different issue entirely. If the ATR are too effective, then I am sure your B&Ming would be even worse.

If you go on a crime spree then expect to get away with it entirely by switching to a clean ship then you are the one in error. Prior to 3.0 you would have had to suffer the consequences till the bounty cooled off, at least you get the chance to change ships now.

To draw a parallel with real world history: One of the most notorious gangsters in American history (Al Capone aka Scarface) was actually not done for the numerous heinous acts they were instrumental in but rather the relatively minor offence of tax evasion.

It is perfectly feasible to avoid gaining notoriety and bounties, but if you do gain either then you should just accept the consequences and move on.

You are probably right with all you said. But this is all theory. A story about Al Capone is a nice anectode, without any connection what happens in the game, I try to talk to you about. You seem to have no idea what happens in game, because of that I invited you to try it. Change your role, be a criminal for one day and then tell me if you feel this is a nicely working system.

I have a hard time to find an argument that is against the existance of C&P, here in this thread and across the board. I think everybody is fine with the general existeance of such a mechanic. But what´s the point of it when it´s not working properly. This shouldn´t be a system to make "legal" players happy because the "illegal" gets punished for whatever. So there´s no need to defend that, I´m WITH YOU on this topic.

You bring up real world as comparsion. Well, ok then. If you look at todays world, you will find out a huge part of global business happens in criminal activities. Weapons, drugs, trafficking are just the biggest. I´m pretty sure humanity just got better with it in the last 1290 years. Where is the representation of that in the C&P mechanic?

For me it´s about how it feels to play a certain role in game. And I promise you will hate how it works atm., if you choose to do both legal and illegal activities. It feels like no one at FD tried to be a criminal when testing it. There are so many small bugs and flaws in design. This is my concern, not C&P as a whole. Yet you keep trying to teach me what crime is.

All I´m asking for is to apply more logic, having two states that describe your legal status is just silly. If notoriety is carried over the same should apply to the wanted status. Or the other way around. I don´t care which one, I just want to have a consistent system over which I can organise myself.

Just being sent to timeout in a videogame is after I´ve been a "bad bad player" is not an option for me, it´s a manifestation of flawed design.

And it´s ok disagree, so there´s no need to teach me. I see where you are coming from, apply the same to my viewpoint and we´ll be fine. The galaxy is big enough to support both playstyles, with each individually deserving a proper working mechanic. There is so much potential unused, even for legal players.

And honestly, it is a little tiring to answer to something that wasn´t my point in the first place. The same applies to many answers Aashenfox gets, they just don´t pick up the criticism highlighted by him. Instead I find many explanations why crime is bad and doesn´t pay and if you don´t want troubles, better stay out of it completely. You know, some people call this behaviour whataboutism.

 

[lenna]

All I´m asking for is to apply more logic, having two states that describe your legal status is just silly.

It might be a bit gamey but it is not silly nor unprecedented - Need For Speed: Most Wanted (the original version) for example had car heat and player bounty, but then it did not have rebuy concerns and bounty was treated as a progression score. With ED, it is the other way round and for good reasons IMO.

The Notoriety mechanic is a personal cross jurisdiction metric wrt your level of criminal activity. This is synonymous with bounty level in the original NFS:MW but fades over time (unlike the bounty score in NFS:MW). The higher your notoriety the stronger the response that Law Enforcement is likely to use. This may mean that under some periphery circumstances players may feel penalised but for those looking for consequences from criminal activity the Notoriety mechanic helps to facilitate that. There are a couple of bugs with some of the specifics like the effect of wanted level on modules that are slated to be addressed in the next patch (v3.0.4) but overall the Notoriety mechanic is fair and reasonable. Over time Notoriety will fade if you keep your nose clean but as Notoriety does not directly affect you when you are in a clean ship the "consequences" of high notoriety are mostly avoidable. The rate at which this fades was agreed with the community during the public beta of 3.0, it was not arbitrarily set by FD.

The Bounty mechanic is a measure of the level of crime executed in a given ship. This is synonymous with heat level in the original NFS:MW but does not fade over time and prevents certain issues with players side stepping the intended full monetary consequences of criminal activity. It also means that career/role-playing criminals can still enter systems and engage activities effectively under the cloak of a disguise - a clean ship. It also means that accidental criminals have options to continue with game play.

While I do see your perspective, I believe you are completely wrong in your assessment of the situation. Pre-3.0 C&P consequences were practically non-existent and lenient to the point of being laughable while at the same time being too punitive to accidental criminals. The split of the C&P metrics into Personal Notoriety and Ship Bounty helps to deal with both issues. If there was not the split, either accidental criminals would be too harshly dealt with or career criminals would still have no consequences worth noting. This is less about punishing criminals and more about giving criminal gameplay more depth.

Certain less desirable and more extreme PvP behaviours are primarily reserved for direct intervention by FD via the in-game player reporting system.

 

[Jack Schitt]

Perhaps they could use reputation more creatively.

[...]

I like this. We have all these separate metrics for measuring a character's relationship with society; faction reputation, superpower reputation, bounty level, Powerplay allegiance, Notoriety, Naval ranks, maybe Karma soon. All layered on top of each other but rarely interacting.

It is not exactly a secret that ED has a C&P system and killing or attacking clean targets (regardless of their NPC/PC nature) is a clean breech of in-game law in pretty much all games that include a model of a form of civilisation. Only a complete idiot would think there would be no consequences for breaking the law.

Or someone who's spent three years playing a game in which there were effectively no consequences for breaking the law?

I too read the release notes and follow the development feedback, and I'm very pleased that actions now have consequences. Unfortunately we know that not everyone stays up to date with the content of new releases, and the current C&P would have been a radical change from what's gone before even without the soon-to-be-tweaked unintended consequences. And players have been caught out by it.

You're entitled to your "screw 'em if they don't read the notes" attitude. I might even agree with it where certain individuals are concerned. But sometimes it seems as though it's also FD's default position because interaction with the game itself gives little or no information on what's changed or what the implications might be, until the changes bite. That's really not a good image for a developer to carry.

Where the OP was concerned, it was a clear and deliberate act as the result of incompetence/lack-of-due-care and there were no extenuating circumstances justify it not being considered murder IMO. It may have not been pre-meditated but it certainly was deliberate.

Agreed, but I wasn't just talking about the OP.

 

[lenna]

You're entitled to your "screw 'em if they don't read the notes" attitude. I might even agree with it where certain individuals are concerned. But sometimes it seems as though it's also FD's default position because interaction with the game itself gives little or no information on what's changed or what the implications might be, until the changes bite. That's really not a good image for a developer to carry.

FD do make a reasonable attempt to keep people informed:-

1. Newsletters
2. Forum Release Notes and News Stickies
3. Game launcher notices and links to Release Notes
4. Release Notes announcements via Steam Library News and Steam Community Forums

It is less a "screw em" attitude and more a "*sigh* *shrug*" one. You can take a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

I suppose this type of whining is what has precipitated certain idiotic "contents may be hot" and "may contain nuts" notices in the real world - just putting such notices on things does not mean people will read them, everyone should just try to use common sense instead.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

I am playing the game since its release. I have racked up over 600 hours along the way. And still, when I incurred my first bounty after the new C&P system was introduced, I had no idea what the game wanted me to do, in order to lose it again.

Sure, I went to the forum and found that I will have to wait for 2 hours. Which I did. Nothing happened. After more research, I found out that I must not be docked while waiting for those 2 hours. Which I did. Nothing happened.

I then figured out by myself that I probably need to be in the same game mode I incurred the penalty in, and then wait 2 hours. Which I did. And then the notoriety indeed dropped. But IF still remained locked.

I was then told that I probably have to log out, log back in again, then wait a little more, and then I could pay off my bounties. That worked.

No amount of newsletters, release notes or forum posts can make up for that mess. I am an experienced commander, and I don't mind spending some time to figure out how things are working. It's what makes me like this game. But imagine a new player, who doesn't have to learn only this, but a boatload of other features that are poorly (or not at all) documented inside the game.

There just is no need to make the learning curve that steep. It's poor game design, period.

And no, I'm not opposing a C&P system. I also think it could be even more punishing. I even wrote a concept for one some time last year, that involved hardcore PvP murderers to risk losing their engineered modules in case they ever got caught.

But whatever you do, it needs to be somewhat transparent and comprehensible. The current system could be all that, with just a little more development effort, and without introducing "click here to win" buttons. But as much as I admire FDev for the fantastic universe and spaceship simulation they created - traditional game design (which includes UI and menu design) certainly does not appear to be their strong suit.

 

[lenna]

No amount of newsletters, release notes or forum posts can make up for that mess.

I don't think anyone is claiming there are not bugs with the system but the release notes do go into ALOT of detail:-

Bounties and Fines

• Bounties and fine are applied to the ship you're in.
• Fines never mature into bounties.
• Bounties never become dormant.
• Bounties never expire.
• Fines can be paid off at security contacts.
• Bounties can be cleared by Interstellar Factors (when your Notoriety is 0).

These changes aim to simplify crimes. You will now have more control over your criminal status risk and reward. You can store a ship with bounties on (a hot ship), hiding your criminality, but at the cost of not using the ship. Bounties are now more significant as only Interstellar Factors can clear them.

Notoriety and Murder

• Commanders gain a ’notoriety’ rating, a value between zero and ten.
• Notoriety increases by one whenever a Commander commits a murder crime.
• Notoriety decays one unit every 2 hours of time when you’re logged in the game back down to zero.
• For each level of notoriety, murder bounty values are increased by a fraction of the perpetrator's rebuy cost - the higher the notoriety, the bigger the fraction.
• If the victim is a Commander (a player rather than an NPC) then you pay 10% percent per point of notoriety of the difference between your base rebuy cost, factoring in engineering, and the victim’s rebuy cost. If your cost is less than your victim’s, this will be zero. This is to de-incentivise destroying smaller ships than your own. This number, as well as others in the Beyond update, will be revisited and tweaked after launch to make sure the game is as balanced and enjoyable as possible.
• In addition, Commanders that are destroyed have their rebuy cost reduced based on the notoriety level of their murderer - the more notorious the assassin, the bigger the discount on rebuy cost for the victim.
• Notoriety is linked directly to the Commander, regardless of which ship they fly in.
• Any Notoriety means the interstellar factors cannot clear your fines or bounties.
• Notoriety is not increased for killing mission targets.

Regardless of any individual player's level of experience, the release notes clearly states how the mechanics are intended to work. Any departures from this should be reported to Support (which has a very visible link on the game launcher) as potential bugs rather than whined about on the forums.

As a side note - I just noted this:-

Friendly Fire and Reckless Weapons Discharge

• The tolerance for friendly fire has been increased - you can deal more damage before you gain the assault crime.
• A new crime has been added "Reckless weapons discharge", which triggers at the old friendly fire threshold, and is only a fine.

These changes reflect the potential increased consequence for a bounty, allowing more leeway before one is issued.

Which relates to earlier comments about lessening the consequences of Friendly Fire.

 

[Kaa Mchorror]

You are probably right with all you said. But this is all theory. A story about Al Capone is a nice anectode, without any connection what happens in the game, I try to talk to you about. You seem to have no idea what happens in game, because of that I invited you to try it. Change your role, be a criminal for one day and then tell me if you feel this is a nicely working system.

I have a hard time to find an argument that is against the existance of C&P, here in this thread and across the board. I think everybody is fine with the general existeance of such a mechanic. But what´s the point of it when it´s not working properly. This shouldn´t be a system to make "legal" players happy because the "illegal" gets punished for whatever. So there´s no need to defend that, I´m WITH YOU on this topic.

You bring up real world as comparsion. Well, ok then. If you look at todays world, you will find out a huge part of global business happens in criminal activities. Weapons, drugs, trafficking are just the biggest. I´m pretty sure humanity just got better with it in the last 1290 years. Where is the representation of that in the C&P mechanic?

For me it´s about how it feels to play a certain role in game. And I promise you will hate how it works atm., if you choose to do both legal and illegal activities. It feels like no one at FD tried to be a criminal when testing it. There are so many small bugs and flaws in design. This is my concern, not C&P as a whole. Yet you keep trying to teach me what crime is.

All I´m asking for is to apply more logic, having two states that describe your legal status is just silly. If notoriety is carried over the same should apply to the wanted status. Or the other way around. I don´t care which one, I just want to have a consistent system over which I can organise myself.

Just being sent to timeout in a videogame is after I´ve been a "bad bad player" is not an option for me, it´s a manifestation of flawed design.

And it´s ok disagree, so there´s no need to teach me. I see where you are coming from, apply the same to my viewpoint and we´ll be fine. The galaxy is big enough to support both playstyles, with each individually deserving a proper working mechanic. There is so much potential unused, even for legal players.

And honestly, it is a little tiring to answer to something that wasn´t my point in the first place. The same applies to many answers Aashenfox gets, they just don´t pick up the criticism highlighted by him. Instead I find many explanations why crime is bad and doesn´t pay and if you don´t want troubles, better stay out of it completely. You know, some people call this behaviour whataboutism.

International crime works because you can reside in a country and conduct your illegal activities outside of it. You might not get into trouble in your country but cause enough internationally and you will gain notoriety.

You aren't being sent to time out - you just switch jurisdictions and ships. I don't see how that is flawed design.

This mechanic has brought me back to the game. I've mostly stayed in my own mini bubble playing the bgs. Now I can build a third fleet, a dirty fleet to stash in the four jurisdictions in my mini bubble. It's a nice layer of depth for criminal play - You actually need to do a little planning to be successful.

 

[Jack Schitt]

FD do make a reasonable attempt to keep people informed:-

1. Newsletters
2. Forum Release Notes and News Stickies
3. Game launcher notices and links to Release Notes
4. Release Notes announcements via Steam Library News and Steam Community Forums

None of those is in the game though. The information is neither in the interactions with the characters or interface (until it's too late) nor on the title screen. It's not even in Galnet, where you might expect someone to have had fun shoehorning the changes into the fiction.

(I will concede that most people don't read Galnet either, but at least it would be there.)

Genuine question: Do the console versions even have a launcher with links? I know they have built-in browsers but I don't own one and I can't find any video of ED actually being launched on one of these machines. If console players can get to the Patch Notes without having to use a separate device or bookmark the URLs then that would be something I guess. Still a hard sell for me though. All relevant information should really be in the game, especially something that changes the rules as significantly as the new C&P.

 

[lenna]

None of those is in the game though. The information is neither in the interactions with the characters or interface (until it's too late) nor on the title screen.

Game Launcher screen - which is the first stop for most people (VR excluded perhaps). However, there is still the Steam Library View which is accessible in VR for at least VIVE owners like myself.

See this link for screenshot of the game launcher if you don't believe me.

There are TWO very prominent and pertinent notices on that screen:-

1. Release Notes
2. C&P Guide

Embedding such information in-game would be more hassle than it is worth IMO.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

A cooldown counter would certainly not be too much of a hassle. Displaying it along with the current notoriety level in the IF screen (or any other screen where it may be of relevance) wouldn't be, either.

That would at least give players a clue what's going on. For any in-depth details, outside information would be sufficient.

 

[El Grillo]

It's always been so easy to accidentally get a bounty, I don't understand how FDev implemented their new punishment system without realising how badly it would effect so many players.

 

[Faded Glory]

I like this. We have all these separate metrics for measuring a character's relationship with society; faction reputation, superpower reputation, bounty level, Powerplay allegiance, Notoriety, Naval ranks, maybe Karma soon. All layered on top of each other but rarely interacting.

FD go to quite some lengths to make having bounties relatively trivial in terms of being a punishment, but there's little or no gameplay involved in being wanted. You either swap to a clean ship or pay off your crimes. Notoriety tries to curtail the latter of these two by putting a delay on being able to do it, and blocks the former if the player is careless and becomes wanted where their other ships are stored. Even then, a player can jump to where they are not wanted...

None of this really engages the player, it's all simply killing time until they can get rid of wanted status if that's what they want to do (and those who don't are happy to fly wanted). Even being able to pay off the bounty isn't exactly fun or engaging. It's just flying to an IF and paying it.

Having to do something more proactive to dig yourself out of your crime hole would seem to me at least to be more in the spirit of the fact that this is a game, and everything within the rules should be fun to do.

I got my reputation with a faction down from I think friendly, but perhaps cordial to neutral because I did some skimmer destruction missions against their skimmers. It's not a big deal, just something to keep my eye on. Logged on last night and took a nice delivery mission, then noticed that this faction had a presence at the station (different system to the one where the skimmer missions were). They happened to have three delivery missions that even being neutral I could take, and one of them had a reward option of Reputation +++. Why not I thought. Took the missions and jumped to the delivery system. Two incoming enemy alerts! Ended up being interdicted 6 times by Dangerous Pythons, had some fun combat, finally got to the delivery station, cashed in the missions, reputation with the faction went back up to cordial, made nearly a million in bounties.

The point is, there's gameplay to be had in having to manage your reputation, very little to be had in being wanted.

 

[lenna]

It's always been so easy to accidentally get a bounty, I don't understand how FDev implemented their new punishment system without realising how badly it would effect so many players.

Not really that easy, but regardless except for incidents when it is clearly the fault of the pilot (c/f the OP's case amongst others) the "accidental bounty cases" are quite rare.

FD seem to have (at least partly) addressed the problem with friendly fire "tagging"/"grazing" incidents by replacing the pre-3.0 "assault" bounty with a "reckless firing" fine and making the "assault" bounty more lenient. Friendly fire where the AI flies across your line of fire is the only true case of "accidental bounties", the rest are more often than not only incurred because of the pilot doing something they can avoid doing.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I definitely agree that Reputation loss for commiting the more serious crimes (Piracy, Smuggling, Assault & Murder) needs to be much higher, but not as a replacement for Notoriety. I also agree that Notoriety needs some positives added in for those who want to pursue the criminal life. The ability to get better prices from Black Markets, the ability to successfully "Menace" ships into giving up Cargo, criminal NPC's being less willing to interdict you & some missions being Notoriety Locked. Far from being an "inconvenience", I believe a fleshed out Notoriety system could be the best part of C&P in the post Beyond game.

 

[shadragon]

Or they could just give up on the whole "all ships are equal" thing and only use notoriety to punish player on player crime, make it a pilots association penalty.

And as soon as you write a magical piece of code to tell PvP from seal clubbing you will have your wish.

What, you can't do that?

Neither can Frontier.

 

[Jack Schitt]

Game Launcher screen - which is the first stop for most people (VR excluded perhaps).

I will admit the words "title screen" were badly chosen; I should have said "main menu". Nonetheless the launcher is still not in the game which is what I was talking about, hence the reference to interactions with characters and Galnet.

I know what the launcher is, which is why I asked whether the consoles have one. Do they? Nobody has answered that yet.

Embedding such information in-game would be more hassle than it is worth IMO.

But not IMO. And that's the lovely thing about opinions.

 

[Sethioz]

I don't have anything against high punishment against crime, but what I do hate in ED, is the fact on how easy it is to get most wanted.
I've been saying this all the time, devs need to stop with those absolutely brainless ideas, such as if ship randomly hits you and dies, you become wanted.
or if you're in a fight and you accidently hit another ship then you become wanted, while authority ships and other AI ships are ALLOWED to hit you during combat and they don't get wanted level. ... this is SO UNFAIR AND STUPID!

anoother thing i hate is that you're not even allowed to shoot a wanted ship without scanning them first ... what kind of lameness is that? If i SEE that authority ships attack it, then it MUST be wanted ... yet you get wanted levle for attacking a ship you haven't scanned.

as i said, it's too easy to get wanted level. You should only get wanted level if you do continous damage to target's shields or if you do more than 2% damage to their hull. anything else should be considered as accidental fire.
and remove that "must scan" thing, if ship is wanted, then don't give me wanted level for attacking the ship before scanning it ....

OH YEAH and there was this one time where authority ship rammed me and then blasted into asteroid and i got wanted level for that ... GGGGGG developers. very nicely done.

I'm complaining, because recently those things have become more common than before.

 

[lenna]

I will admit the words "title screen" were badly chosen; I should have said "main menu".

Still counts regardless...

As for information not being available in-game - the ISF guy clearly states on their screen that you need a notoriety of 0 before they will deal with you.

The logical option for anyone with a brain at that point would be to check the forums and/or support FAQs if they don't know something. The information is covered more than adequately there.

What FD have done with keeping appropriately people informed about the C&P changes is no different to most other developers, it is the norm for such things.

 

[ilo]

]
anoother thing i hate is that you're not even allowed to shoot a wanted ship without scanning them first ... what kind of lameness is that?

We have had accepted that rule as part of the game for years and most of the people said ok, careful there, because you are close to insult the player base in your non-stop attempt to insult the developers.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

anoother thing i hate is that you're not even allowed to shoot a wanted ship without scanning them first ... what kind of lameness is that? If i SEE that authority ships attack it, then it MUST be wanted ... yet you get wanted levle for attacking a ship you haven't scanned.

Isn't this fixed now?

• Attacking Wanted ships (player or NPC) is now legal even if the player does not know they are Wanted