Per the title, this is a thread about why C&P is completely back to front, which is going to precede a post I'll make later in the Suggestions forum with a more fleshed-out thing... plus I wanted to separate some of the discussion from the actual suggestion itself. So with that said.
Foreword
Just a couple notes before we truck along:
- I'm not really going to talk about Powerplay bounties. They're their own beast, much like Powerplay itself... for which I think there's bigger problems than just resolving any related C&P issues with it.
- Although it's definitely related, I'm not going to talk too much about PvP C&P. I think the monetary punishments are "fine", and as a concept it kinda just fits in with everything I'll probably post in the "Suggestion".
Back to front? What does that mean?
Means exactly that. It's back to front. In practice, the punishments the game enforces are (arguably) more severe for what I'll call an accidental/low impact crime[1] than someone pursuing a life of crime. Realistically, if you exclude any monetary component, the "punishment" is identical no matter the scale or severity of a crime. That is, when you get a bounty on your head, the usual "Actions on"[0] is to:
- Wait til any notoriety reaches 0
- Fly to an Interstellar Factors; and
- Pay off the bounty
Note, this is the same in *any* situation, whether it's an accidental crime[1] or intentional. This might appear fine on the surface, but have a think about these two cases.
Case 1
You're playing the game with the intent of doing some sort of legal activity... let's say Bounty Hunting. You're in a res, firing away, and lo-and-behold, you totally and unintentionally decide to show some innocent Eagle crossing your your C4 Plasma Accellerator's line of fire[2]. Bam. Bounty and one level of notoriety. Now you gotta wait two hours for Notoriety to clear before paying off the bounty, or go hand yourself in, copping a rebuy plus the bounty and ending up a few jumps away. Of course, you could just ignore it, and go bounty hunt somewhere else. That's totally fine, but in a lot of cases, you were probably doing things in that system for a reason. So you're a bit spannered. Either way, resolving it can be a little, or severely inconvenient, depending on what you're doing.
Case 2
You're playing the game with the intent of being a total murderhobo criminal. Whether this is just ganking random CG players and getting Notoriety, ganking NPCs because you want to tank a faction and don't care about Notoriety, or you've stacked a bunch of illegal kill missions which will get you a handful of bounties, but no notoriety, you are fully committed to being wanted in this system. You get bounties and Notoriety, and you give zero proverbials about it, because you fully intended to do that. In this scenario, you may not even care about clearing your name... you hit that system, now you're going to go somewhere else and do legal stuff again. Or, if you do need to clear your name, you probably already know where the nearest IF is and can clear your name as if nothing happened, or if you have stacks of Notoriety, you just dock at the IF andlog out before bed/work/whatever leave the client running, come back later and clear your name. Or hand yourself in, whatever.
Putting that all together
Key issue here is in Case 1 (random law-abider), the player is potentially majorly inconvenienced[3], particularly if their intended activities were specific to that jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Case 2 (career criminal) there's almost no inconvenience; it's status quo.
The key difference here is *not* the crimes being committed; again, regardless of if you're a murderhobo or an accidental criminal, the same actions-on applies.
The key difference is the player's ability to manage the bounties on their head and maintain a squeaky-clean record with the least inconvenience. A player going about their legal business and finding themselves on the receiving end of a crime won't have planned much for this scenario, but a career criminal expects it, and will be impacted minimally as a result..
And that's what's upside-down, back to front about it. The current C&P system *rewards* evasion and mitigation of your criminal history, and *punishes* an inability to do this.
So what does ol' Jmanis think?
If you're in pursuit of a criminal career, you should be enduring and embracing your criminal history, not evading it. Meanwhile, "minor" offences (anything that doesn't result in notoriety[4], which is everything except murder) should be much easier to clear.
Someone (Bitstorm, I think) said something like "Some people wear a bounty like a badge of honour, and that's fine"... and I agree with that. But I'd also go one step further and say that if you're pursuing a criminal career path, clearing your name should be detrimental to that career. We start to get a bit into the "suggestion" part of the post now so I'll be a bit scant on the details, since to get this right needs a rework of pretty much everything. Suffice to say, to cover off a few points:
- You shouldn't need an IF to clear a bounty when you have zero notoriety. You still shouldn't be able to clear a bounty when you have Notoriety though.
- Criminal services such as illegal missions, black markets (for selling *and* buying) and other such services should be locked behind having a current criminal status[5]
- Notoriety should act like faction reputation, in that benefits gained from various criminal services should increase the higher your notoriety is.
That's pretty much the startings of a proper criminal career path, rather than just supporting the local anarchy faction where you need to stay perpetually squeaky clean in order to retain access to their missions, black market etc.. Diving a bit more into the "suggestions" part of the post, you can start to think of things like:
- Access to a "black" bounty system, where you can hand in "bounties" for destroying authority vessels
- Current black market system is also back to front... they're generally available In low/anarchy security with low-security-minded factions in control. Black markets should actually be available everywhere, with the highest profits to be made in the most dangerous locations, i.e High Security Dictatorships etc.
- Access to "antagonist" mission boards, offering illegal missions which cause harm rather than help to factions.
- Much bigger discrepancies needed in security status; being scanned at a High Security system should be almost guaranteed, and nearly non-existent chance in low/anarchy.
etc..
So... yeah, just my 40c.
[0] Usual. Of course you can die, hand yourself in, or sell your hot ship.
[1] Accidental crimes being things like "Friendly Fire" bounties, speeding fines.
[2] Before you start furiously writing "Git Gud" or "weapons control, learn it!", I'm totally in that camp. Things like this happen to me and it's all fair game imo. I'm just providing an example.
[3] I'm not saying Crime shouldn't be inconvenient to deal with the consequences here.
[4] I'm up for making more crimes attract notoriety though, like smuggling.
[5] Whether that's anonymous access, a local bounty, Hostile rep[6] or Notoriety.
[6] Yes, you should be able to dock at a station where you are Hostile, using anonymous protocols
Oh PS: C&P isn't meant to stop crime, just add consequences. Monetary consequences are fine, "locked out of the game" is pretty dumb. Forgot to throw that in somewhere...
Foreword
Just a couple notes before we truck along:
- I'm not really going to talk about Powerplay bounties. They're their own beast, much like Powerplay itself... for which I think there's bigger problems than just resolving any related C&P issues with it.
- Although it's definitely related, I'm not going to talk too much about PvP C&P. I think the monetary punishments are "fine", and as a concept it kinda just fits in with everything I'll probably post in the "Suggestion".
Back to front? What does that mean?
Means exactly that. It's back to front. In practice, the punishments the game enforces are (arguably) more severe for what I'll call an accidental/low impact crime[1] than someone pursuing a life of crime. Realistically, if you exclude any monetary component, the "punishment" is identical no matter the scale or severity of a crime. That is, when you get a bounty on your head, the usual "Actions on"[0] is to:
- Wait til any notoriety reaches 0
- Fly to an Interstellar Factors; and
- Pay off the bounty
Note, this is the same in *any* situation, whether it's an accidental crime[1] or intentional. This might appear fine on the surface, but have a think about these two cases.
Case 1
You're playing the game with the intent of doing some sort of legal activity... let's say Bounty Hunting. You're in a res, firing away, and lo-and-behold, you totally and unintentionally decide to show some innocent Eagle crossing your your C4 Plasma Accellerator's line of fire[2]. Bam. Bounty and one level of notoriety. Now you gotta wait two hours for Notoriety to clear before paying off the bounty, or go hand yourself in, copping a rebuy plus the bounty and ending up a few jumps away. Of course, you could just ignore it, and go bounty hunt somewhere else. That's totally fine, but in a lot of cases, you were probably doing things in that system for a reason. So you're a bit spannered. Either way, resolving it can be a little, or severely inconvenient, depending on what you're doing.
Case 2
You're playing the game with the intent of being a total murderhobo criminal. Whether this is just ganking random CG players and getting Notoriety, ganking NPCs because you want to tank a faction and don't care about Notoriety, or you've stacked a bunch of illegal kill missions which will get you a handful of bounties, but no notoriety, you are fully committed to being wanted in this system. You get bounties and Notoriety, and you give zero proverbials about it, because you fully intended to do that. In this scenario, you may not even care about clearing your name... you hit that system, now you're going to go somewhere else and do legal stuff again. Or, if you do need to clear your name, you probably already know where the nearest IF is and can clear your name as if nothing happened, or if you have stacks of Notoriety, you just dock at the IF and
Putting that all together
Key issue here is in Case 1 (random law-abider), the player is potentially majorly inconvenienced[3], particularly if their intended activities were specific to that jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Case 2 (career criminal) there's almost no inconvenience; it's status quo.
The key difference here is *not* the crimes being committed; again, regardless of if you're a murderhobo or an accidental criminal, the same actions-on applies.
The key difference is the player's ability to manage the bounties on their head and maintain a squeaky-clean record with the least inconvenience. A player going about their legal business and finding themselves on the receiving end of a crime won't have planned much for this scenario, but a career criminal expects it, and will be impacted minimally as a result..
And that's what's upside-down, back to front about it. The current C&P system *rewards* evasion and mitigation of your criminal history, and *punishes* an inability to do this.
So what does ol' Jmanis think?
If you're in pursuit of a criminal career, you should be enduring and embracing your criminal history, not evading it. Meanwhile, "minor" offences (anything that doesn't result in notoriety[4], which is everything except murder) should be much easier to clear.
Someone (Bitstorm, I think) said something like "Some people wear a bounty like a badge of honour, and that's fine"... and I agree with that. But I'd also go one step further and say that if you're pursuing a criminal career path, clearing your name should be detrimental to that career. We start to get a bit into the "suggestion" part of the post now so I'll be a bit scant on the details, since to get this right needs a rework of pretty much everything. Suffice to say, to cover off a few points:
- You shouldn't need an IF to clear a bounty when you have zero notoriety. You still shouldn't be able to clear a bounty when you have Notoriety though.
- Criminal services such as illegal missions, black markets (for selling *and* buying) and other such services should be locked behind having a current criminal status[5]
- Notoriety should act like faction reputation, in that benefits gained from various criminal services should increase the higher your notoriety is.
That's pretty much the startings of a proper criminal career path, rather than just supporting the local anarchy faction where you need to stay perpetually squeaky clean in order to retain access to their missions, black market etc.. Diving a bit more into the "suggestions" part of the post, you can start to think of things like:
- Access to a "black" bounty system, where you can hand in "bounties" for destroying authority vessels
- Current black market system is also back to front... they're generally available In low/anarchy security with low-security-minded factions in control. Black markets should actually be available everywhere, with the highest profits to be made in the most dangerous locations, i.e High Security Dictatorships etc.
- Access to "antagonist" mission boards, offering illegal missions which cause harm rather than help to factions.
- Much bigger discrepancies needed in security status; being scanned at a High Security system should be almost guaranteed, and nearly non-existent chance in low/anarchy.
etc..
So... yeah, just my 40c.
[0] Usual. Of course you can die, hand yourself in, or sell your hot ship.
[1] Accidental crimes being things like "Friendly Fire" bounties, speeding fines.
[2] Before you start furiously writing "Git Gud" or "weapons control, learn it!", I'm totally in that camp. Things like this happen to me and it's all fair game imo. I'm just providing an example.
[3] I'm not saying Crime shouldn't be inconvenient to deal with the consequences here.
[4] I'm up for making more crimes attract notoriety though, like smuggling.
[5] Whether that's anonymous access, a local bounty, Hostile rep[6] or Notoriety.
[6] Yes, you should be able to dock at a station where you are Hostile, using anonymous protocols
Oh PS: C&P isn't meant to stop crime, just add consequences. Monetary consequences are fine, "locked out of the game" is pretty dumb. Forgot to throw that in somewhere...
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