I believe recent events with DW2 have dramatised the need for an Open PvE mode. Many of the CMDRs at the DW2 launch didn't have access to a suitable Private Group. Therefore, to take part in a mass launch event they had to be in Open and risk becoming the prey of people intent on wrecking the event.
I propose Open-PvE to be an extra choice at login, in addition to Open, Private Group and Solo.
Possible implementations:
1. Player-player damage disabled. I assume that all damage is already tagged according to source to enable bounties, mission counts, notoriety etc. to be apportioned. All that's needed is a final check that damage is from an allowed source before it's applied. This should ideally include both weapon fire and collision damage between players.
2. No damage modification, but automatic sanctions. E.g. if a player is destroyed by another player in Open-PvE mode, the destroyer pays the victim's rebuy and also a fine, and/or gets banned from Open-PvE for a significant time.
3. Implementation as a PvP flag in Open; so Open-PvE is not actually a separate mode and players with and without the flag set are visible to one another. To avoid exploits it could be appropriate that the flag can only be changed when docked. Attacking a player who has the flag not set could be managed by the methods of either 1 or 2.
I believe this addition would avoid the negative publicity and problems of the kind we've just seen at DW2 and also reunite the fractured player-base. At present those who want PvE play are spread over several huge private groups (which lack admin tools and can't really prevent PvP violations of their rules when infiltrated). It would not have any effect on the play in Open.
Problem with 1 is that this would still be abused. and create some really strange things regarding bumping into to other players, today if I fly with a friend in a conflict zone, we are in similar specced ships, and we fire at the same target, we are very often in very close formation, not by choice, but by the general flight path to hit the target.
So for this to even work, player ships needs to be transparent against other player ships to begin with. And how stupid would that not look if you just could fly through another player ship.
2. Has merits. As this does not really alter the damage etc, but it can still be abused. I grief you, so I sit in my Billion dollar Cutter, get banged up, and then I suiciode against your big ship and explodes, now you where the last player on me, and I died, and you now got pushed into speeding, etc, etc, and to add insult to injury, you now have to pay my rebuy and YOUR rebuy.
3. This is basically 1 again.
What is the most common issue people do not like about griefers? The senseless act of violence, and I doubt we will see any changes to C&P or the rumoured Karma system to actually have a significant impact on this, it is the loss of progress. etc, and time, but that we cannot do anything about.
So what if we change how the rebuy works.
So if a player kills another player, this happens to the player that got killed.
Player does not pay any rebuy
Player does not loose any Data/War bonds/Bounty vouchers.
Player does not loose any bounties/fines player has.
Any Cargo is restored
Any NPC crew, is restored
Any mission that has ship destruction as failure, does not fail.
In essence, you are put back as you where before you got killed, with one difference, you shield/hull is all repaired.
Player get a few options for where to respawn
1. Previous docked station
2. Previous system player jumped from, not available if played had docked in the current system.
3. Closest station
So now player have a few option and will get back into the game, and then only thing they have lost is some time. Then can now opt to continue and try to evade the griefers again, or switch game mode and be on their way. But they will not be out of pocket for the rebuy.
Now these rules should not be in play if player is wanted. That should be a perfectly legal for any player to attack and kill any other Wanted player.
This should work differently near stations, if a player become wanted near a station this can be caused by griefers, and thus we obviously do not want that player to have to pay the rebuy, and this would also mean that they griefer also get a free pass, unless the griefer was already wanted when the entering this instance. And this should not cause any real problem for players, as the option to be restored at the closest station would be this station
Piracy is a special case. Consider the following, A cutter full of Void Opals, I pirate all the void Opals, by using hatch breaking limpets, then I kill the Cutter. Cutter would now come back with full cargo, and we have now duplicated its cargo.... So obviously we only need to account for cargo still in your hold. So griefers can still mess you upp a bit, but they cannot empty your cargo hold and at the same time kill you in seconds. So make a change that doing piracy against players take longer time, ie hatch breaker limpets need more time to work. This would any player that fear this to do an approved 15 seconds menu logout, and they would only a few tonnes of cargo.
Mission specific cargo is always restored.
This is far from a fool proof system, but if we make the target as much as possible not to loose progress/credits then there would be much less enjoyment for the griefers. Scenario, a CG, you are hauling CG goods, and get interdicted by griefers, and killed. You can now choose option to be restored at the closest station, and this will most likely be the CG station, and you can now unload you cargo.
So if we work on this issue from this end. then PvP in itself would not come with high costs. and this might even promote more players to try PvP. In my opinion PvP should not be about who has he biggest bank account, it should be about fun, challenge and skills, so I have no issues with no cost rebuy for PvP players as a side effect of this.
