You seriously need to make this game fun for beginners and fix the C&P crap.

[Misty_Dark]

The karma system may be with us by the end of beyond but I don't hold out much hope for it if C&P is anything to go by. The vast majority of calls to reform C&P from the forums leading up to beyond, was regarding PvP or more specifically (griefing/ganking). Instead we got "hotships", which, did nothing to address this and furthermore started to unravel because it was bas on flawed logic, i.e. the crimes follow the ships.

What we should of had in my opinion is a Pilots Federation reputation/bounty/rebuy system for 3.0. Karma evokes something slightly different to me as it implies death and rebirth, which , should perhaps be fitting for things like combat logging and other cheatings or anti-social behaviour. I do not count griefing/ganking as "karma crime", because it PvP is part of the game, this could be dealt better with C&P & PF rep system, imho. Of course some players are going to want to shoot up other players for laughs but they could find themselves with big bounties on their head and increase rebuys. This would be governed by a PF rep system.

The OP does make a good point about getting ridiculous bounties for stray shots, these should just be fines and rep loss. If your wanted status was tied to your faction rep, i.e. if you were "hostile rep" = wanted =bounties on head to the equivalent to your ship value. This ties your actions to your criminal status and the means to get out of trouble with the law is in your own hands also.

It is possible we get the Karma system by end of beyond, it is also possible that they are running the Karma in the background already.... as much of how the Karma system works would be server side..... Lets take the popular topic of Combat logging....
Why we are not punished for dong that is that people not "working" the system, get disconnects randomly and only triggering on specific times when we will "punish" you for this would be unfair, so to make it alot more lenient to the average player, we get the consequence that player can abuse this. Now how I think the would make the Karma system deal with this is to keep a log on all disconnects, and record what was the situation when it happened?
So average player with dodgy internet, get disconnect all over the place, they loose connection just flying, winning fights, loosing fights, etc, etc, So Karma system will not raise any flags on this player.
Then we have the notorious seal clubber, that when he picks on the wrong target, and is about to loose, simply combat log to avoid the rebuy and deny the other player their win. Here the Karma system would see that just about any disconnect had the same parameters, fight instigated by player, player is loosing the fight, disconnect happens. Karma would increase the Karma level, and this could later be used later to add consequences, punishment etc, etc for example, C&P could send ATR x2, x3, x4 as soon as player enters certain systems.... They could get a ATR on standby to jump into their instance as soon as they open fire on an clean player, etc, etc, making it almost impossible to hunt "newbies", or they could simply take directly to rebuy when they login again...
And do not forget, Karma would most likely working on analysing data, so reporting a CMDR for combat logging, suicidal crashing etc, etc, and then when reported using the in game reporting system could put player in a priority queue to be analysed....



It does not really matter what the system would be called, FDev seems to have choosing Karma for this function. I do get why they might have chosen Karma, as is not uncommon to refer to people having god or bad Karma based on their actions, without talking about rebirth.



I do agree that OP makes some good points about the ridiculous bounties, and FDev have also acknowledged that and they said they would raise the cap for accidental fire....

And we are still missing the core issue here, it is still not C&P initiated problem, it has been this way as long as I can remember. C&P only make the cost for these small infractions alot more noticeable than before. So the issue here is that we only have ONE response by authority, kill on sight if you are wanted... And you can only turn yourself in (a new feature), after you have successfully docked at a wanted station.... how stupid isn't that to begin with? Add to this how they sneaked in the notoriety level, an almost hidden stat, that is not explained at all ingame, confusing player all over the place...

 

[Morphemes]

"1.5 $M credits per hour" ?
You try exploration?

 

[Gun Star]

I read that as "Your Game needs to be Ace Combat in Space"

What is fun about paying a fine in a penitentiary?
Makes you think more about committing crimes
What is fun about paying 60,000CR buyback for a lousy 200CR wanted crime that is unintentional?
Learn some trigger control there sport
What is fun about having to hop 5 jumps back to a CG starport with an Eagle and minimal fuel scoop?
Save up and get a better ship. I started in a Sidey then a Adder for a very long time till I saved for a Asp X. I did long range cargo hauling in that for a while till I got a Python. Then my Python bought me my first Conda. Stepping stones. Friend me in game if you are PC I will take you out and show you some things and get you money.
What is fun about a CG that you can't earn more than 100% level of 500,000 CR in an hour of gameplay.
Wing up and get a bigger share of the money. It will start adding up. If you are on PC I would wing with you and you can sit in the shadow of my Cutter helping take down enemies and getting lots of money in the process.
What is fun about a CG that makes you travel 161LY to pick up Kobe Beef, and 150LY to pick up Snake Gin, and 146 LY to pick up Dance Dust just to make 500,000 Cr in an hour of grinding travel repeating the same thing over and over...
Unless you have a decent cargo ship trade CG's are not worth it.
What is fun about playing a game for 425 hours to accumulate 61 $M credits doing a variety of missions (mining, exploring, trading, hauling, boom deliveries that have no incentive at a payout rate of $143,000 CR/hour when you can make 1.5 million per hour of effort grinding to get 1.5 $M/hour staying in a sidewinder and flying at you local Hi-REZ until to have $100 million for a "decent" survivable ship you can take into a combat zone and survive the "mob" attacks without any flying skill reward or wing support?
Combat Zones are not meant to be easy. You are up against usually military forces with some of the ships being engineered. You need to have a good combat ship and some engineering to really compete in there or wing up with bigger ships that can tank for you. I would stick to Low Res or regular Res. Get a Kill Warrant Scanner in the Res it will stack more bounties onto the wanted ships.
What is fun about mining for a few thousand credits in an hour of work?
This I could agree with until you figure out what is the good stuff to mine and where. When I mine I usually make 15 - 25 mil for a couple hours of work.
What is fun about exploring to make 10 $M credits in 25 hours for a payout of $400,000 CR per hour of jumping 460 light years out?
460 LY is not exploring. Exploring is going over 1000LY out and having a ADS, Surface Scanner and going to systems far out and getting all the data for every planet. I recommend looking up Roads to Riches. You will have close to 500 mil and almost Elite in Explorer if you complete the list.
What is fun about a C&P system where you can't loiter, can't trespass, can't shoot at a station, penitentiary, NPC police, NPC ship or make a mistake that nets you a wanted bounty of 200-600 CR (that's the fine for doing any of the above if you feel like it) and then having your ship blown out of the air because you Frontier decide your game is more fun that way....
Some people cant get a round that they are trying for a sim like atmosphere and you can just go in gun blazing into a fight without any consequences. Honestly you need to be really tagging people that are not wanted. They made friendly fire even more lax in that last update.



Take your time. This game is meant to be a time sink. Not how fast I can getting millions of credits and into the biggest ship possible.

 

[CMDR_Elver]

It is possible we get the Karma system by end of beyond, it is also possible that they are running the Karma in the background already.... as much of how the Karma system works would be server side..... Lets take the popular topic of Combat logging....
Why we are not punished for dong that is that people not "working" the system, get disconnects randomly and only triggering on specific times when we will "punish" you for this would be unfair, so to make it alot more lenient to the average player, we get the consequence that player can abuse this. Now how I think the would make the Karma system deal with this is to keep a log on all disconnects, and record what was the situation when it happened?
So average player with dodgy internet, get disconnect all over the place, they loose connection just flying, winning fights, loosing fights, etc, etc, So Karma system will not raise any flags on this player.
Then we have the notorious seal clubber, that when he picks on the wrong target, and is about to loose, simply combat log to avoid the rebuy and deny the other player their win. Here the Karma system would see that just about any disconnect had the same parameters, fight instigated by player, player is loosing the fight, disconnect happens. Karma would increase the Karma level, and this could later be used later to add consequences, punishment etc, etc for example, C&P could send ATR x2, x3, x4 as soon as player enters certain systems.... They could get a ATR on standby to jump into their instance as soon as they open fire on an clean player, etc, etc, making it almost impossible to hunt "newbies", or they could simply take directly to rebuy when they login again...
And do not forget, Karma would most likely working on analysing data, so reporting a CMDR for combat logging, suicidal crashing etc, etc, and then when reported using the in game reporting system could put player in a priority queue to be analysed....



It does not really matter what the system would be called, FDev seems to have choosing Karma for this function. I do get why they might have chosen Karma, as is not uncommon to refer to people having god or bad Karma based on their actions, without talking about rebirth.



I do agree that OP makes some good points about the ridiculous bounties, and FDev have also acknowledged that and they said they would raise the cap for accidental fire....

And we are still missing the core issue here, it is still not C&P initiated problem, it has been this way as long as I can remember. C&P only make the cost for these small infractions alot more noticeable than before. So the issue here is that we only have ONE response by authority, kill on sight if you are wanted... And you can only turn yourself in (a new feature), after you have successfully docked at a wanted station.... how stupid isn't that to begin with? Add to this how they sneaked in the notoriety level, an almost hidden stat, that is not explained at all ingame, confusing player all over the place...

We haven't heard a lot about it recently, last time I heard anything about it the karma system it was going to be in the guise of the Pilots Federation. Not really sure how that will run. I agree with what you say about combat logging and I would have a "karma" system for that as it is totally cheating outside of the game. However things like griefing/ganking however annoying are part of the game and should be handled different. All that I have heard is there will be a karma system to deal with all these types of problems, which doesn't fill me with confidence.

Agree with a lot in your last paragraph the C&P system needed overhauling but FDev just tried to reinvent the wheel and failed. Notoriety was brought in fix the problem of "hotships" being fundamentally flawed, hence it was not really explained with the initial update. Putting the crimes not on the cmdr but on the ship, just meant if you got caught i.e. scanned commiting a crime(s) all the cmdr had to do was change ships. So FDev went back to the drawing board and brought out notoriety for the cmdrs. This kind defeats the purpose of hotships at beast for a time period, when the notoriety decays. So all cmdrs have to do is leave the game running when docked for hours and then the notoriety is back to 0 again. Its basically a flawed system.

A lot of the elements to make a decent C&P system are kind of there be Fdev have not integrated it ogether well. Then they bolt on something else to compensate, then reinvent the wheel again. Nevermind.

 

[firemane]

The OP presents many good points.

My only advice is, this type of game is much more enjoyable if you play it with friends. You will develop faster, grow faster, and have more fun.

 

[m0rl0ck]

The C&P system is much better than it used to be, much simpler to understand.

 

[m0rl0ck]

You make some very good points.

FDev will need to make the game more accessible to new players if it wants substantial growth, however it's so far into development that I don't think it will happen.

If they interviewed me, here's what I'd say they should add for new palyers:

1) Fix the order of the tutorials and make sure they work on all platforms and are not too hard to complete. They should also reward players with some in-game loot for completing each one.

2) Provide a one minute video primer, aka "Welcome to the Galaxy and your new Ship," for new players to set the stage and telling them where they are, what ship they are in, about the initial optional mission, etc.

3) Provide optional in-game cut-scenes that are launchable from comm messages (like audio logs are) for each step of the initial data delivery mission. This is such a wasted opportunity to help new players out

4) Enable "Thrust Assist" by default - a feature that would automatically reduce your thrust to 75% when you're within 10 seconds of your plotted destination (eliminating the dreaded Elite Dangerous U-Turn of Shame which is a major reason for early abandonment of the game.)

5) Add "covas" audio tips when a new player tries something for the first time, like dropping into a RES or taking on a cargo mission, etc. Could also link to a more in-depth vid/tutorial.

Or you could just start them in a free ship knowing they will get blown up alot.