Notoriety is just no fun

[varonica]

There are rules in all video games, the rules are what make the game enjoyable

I remember being excited and hopeful when they first announced C&P changes and when they got tons of great suggestions and feedback on those dedicated forums. I actually thought they would implement overhauls to make npc piracy and smuggling systems viable and interesting career paths....

But oh yeah, this is FD.

This is where a lot of issues stem from, piracy and smuggling aren't career paths. When was the last time you, or anyone submitted a resume for a job and included "piracy" as an occupation you had taken part in? Piracy and smuggling aren't career paths, they are things people do because they don't have a career path, like armed robbery, bank robbing and etc.

Trying to turn it into a viable career path is rather silly, a career path where every law enforcement agent in the known galaxy is trying to hunt you down and either kill or capture you? This is how piracy and smuggling work, you break the law, the police find you, you end up in prison or dead, end of career, I don't see how it can be turned into a viable career path myself.

Personally I think there should be more depth to piracy and smuggling, but trying to make a career path by neutering law enforcement and punishment really means it's not piracy or smuggling anymore because you don't face punishment if you are discovered or caught, you can wander in and out of law abiding stations with impunity, yeah right, you can take missions from the police factions and military, these things should all be impossible for a known pirate, and that's exactly what notoriety is about.

Sure you can kill 60 NPC's in an anarchy system, but as long as you leave people alone in controlled systems no-one knows you are a pirate, that seems logical to me. I would assume in an anarchy system while pirating you have concealed your ship name and call sign and can therefore just fly into any station with no problems even if some of your targets escape alive and report the piracy. But try that in a controlled system and the authorities should be all over you and rightly so.

 

[dekot]

There are rules in all video games, the rules are what make the game enjoyable


This is where a lot of issues stem from, piracy and smuggling aren't career paths. When was the last time you, or anyone submitted a resume for a job and included "piracy" as an occupation you had taken part in? Piracy and smuggling aren't career paths, they are things people do because they don't have a career path, like armed robbery, bank robbing and etc.

Trying to turn it into a viable career path is rather silly, a career path where every law enforcement agent in the known galaxy is trying to hunt you down and either kill or capture you? This is how piracy and smuggling work, you break the law, the police find you, you end up in prison or dead, end of career, I don't see how it can be turned into a viable career path myself.

Personally I think there should be more depth to piracy and smuggling, but trying to make a career path by neutering law enforcement and punishment really means it's not piracy or smuggling anymore because you don't face punishment if you are discovered or caught, you can wander in and out of law abiding stations with impunity, yeah right, you can take missions from the police factions and military, these things should all be impossible for a known pirate, and that's exactly what notoriety is about.

Sure you can kill 60 NPC's in an anarchy system, but as long as you leave people alone in controlled systems no-one knows you are a pirate, that seems logical to me. I would assume in an anarchy system while pirating you have concealed your ship name and call sign and can therefore just fly into any station with no problems even if some of your targets escape alive and report the piracy. But try that in a controlled system and the authorities should be all over you and rightly so.

First of all, being a criminal is a possible career path even in real life. Second, if you think about it for 5 minutes, I guarantee you can come up with a better idea to penalize virtual crime without resorting to a real life timer. Don't lower your standards just to defend FD's lazy and incompetent design choices.

 

[varonica]

First of all, being a criminal is a possible career path even in real life.

Nope, you will have to specify what criminal activity you think qualifies as a career. Piracy, arrest and execution, smuggling, arrest and imprisonment, fraud, the same, bank robbery, the same, mugging, break and entry, murder, highway robbery, drug peddling, manufacture of amphetamines, blackmail, ransom, I can't think of one single criminal activity you can put on your CV as a career, let alone that won't get you arrested if found out. You see, the point is in the name, criminal, in breach of the laws of society. For something to be a career it has to be on compliance with the laws of society

Now you might be able to think of criminal activities that people can get away with for a long time, but that doesn't make then a career because they can't be used to further oneself in society because if they are revealed they get you arrested and imprisoned and your assets confiscated.

I guarantee you can come up with

Nope, I don't have to come up with a better alternative, I don't have to come up with any alternative at all, I am quite happy with the way it is, you are the one who is unhappy and want it changed, so why should I be tasked with coming up with an alternative? certainly if you can think of a better alternative than what we have and I do think it is better I will back you on it, you go ahead and knock yourself out, it's been tried but it mostly comes down to a "it's not fair, I want to kill people and not be punished," complaint.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Notoriety is harmless unless you can't or won't leave the system you are wanted in and want to pay a bounty or fine. Even then you can land in a different ship (as longs as your rep is unfriendly or higher), and as long as you keep an eye out for bounty hunters (to avoid complications) its all cool.

This is coming from someone who is normally on 10 notoriety each day.

 

[Moriarte]

For something to be a career it has to be on compliance with the laws of society

Career is a metaphorical journey through professional life. It doesn’t need to be on compliance with anything. Whether you rise through the ranks of sinaloa cartel or deBeers it is career just the same. Key concepts here, defining any “career” motion are: accumulation of professional knowledge and progression through hierarchy. Laws can range from one extreme in Saudi Arabia to another in the US. They don’t define the term career in the slightest.

I kindly suggest you have a glance at first paragraph in this link, no worries, we all get things wrong from time to time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_offender

 

[Stealthie]

No.

Yes.

As long as Pilot's Federation members (players) act differently to NPCs they should be treated differently.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Nope, you will have to specify what criminal activity you think qualifies as a career. Piracy, arrest and execution, smuggling, arrest and imprisonment, fraud, the same, bank robbery, the same, mugging, break and entry, murder, highway robbery, drug peddling, manufacture of amphetamines, blackmail, ransom, I can't think of one single criminal activity you can put on your CV as a career, let alone that won't get you arrested if found out. You see, the point is in the name, criminal, in breach of the laws of society. For something to be a career it has to be on compliance with the laws of society

Not necessarily, a career is more about promotion opportunities and a general long-term growth plan in terms of power, income and responsibility. General lone-wolf crime won't really offer this, but organised crime does. I'm sure the leaders of the big drug cartels would consider themselves to have had quite a successful career in (illegal) business.

 

[Midian Cabal]

Not necessarily, a career is more about promotion opportunities and a general long-term growth plan in terms of power, income and responsibility. General lone-wolf crime won't really offer this, but organised crime does. I'm sure the leaders of the big drug cartels would consider themselves to have had quite a successful career in (illegal) business.

It is business to them and it is organised and managed as such.

 

[Morbad]

Yes.

As long as Pilot's Federation members (players) act differently to NPCs they should be treated differently.

Oh, they should be treated differently in that they should be perceived as greater threats and habitual recidivists. In any sensible setting, bounties and notoriety would just be permanent against such individuals. Indeed, the rest of the galaxy should probably just declare a war of extermination on the Pilot's Federation, suspending all services of any kind to any of it's members while hunting them to annihilation.

Anyway, on the topic of PvP 'deaths' CMDRs cannot die, so it's rather silly that murder charges can be levied against someone for shooting one down.

 

[galahad2069]

Yes.

As long as Pilot's Federation members (players) act differently to NPCs they should be treated differently.

Especially since "acting" in this context pretty much covers "existing" in the first place

 

[Stealthie]

Especially since "acting" in this context pretty much covers "existing" in the first place

Possibly so.

The point, however, is that some people seem to think there shouldn't be any distinction between players and NPCs in regard to criminal activities.

This argument falls down on almost every level, though, given the fundamentally transient nature of an NPCs existence.

People asked for a C&P system in order to mitigate the criminal behaviour of other players and, instead, they got a system that attempts to treat transient NPCs and immutable players similarly - something (almost?) nobody actually asked for.
What we probably should have got was some kind of "Pilot's Federation Enforcement Division" to fulfill the role players actually wanted.

 

[Screemonster]

If you don't like notoriety then don't murder people. Simples.

 

[Bionic Bytes]

If you don't like notoriety then don't murder people. Simples.

It wasn't people I was murdering. I was asking for a distinction between NPC murder and CMDR (people) notoriety decay rates because the penalty for sprite crime seems too long in human hours.

 

[Morbad]

People asked for a C&P system in order to mitigate the criminal behaviour of other players and, instead, they got a system that attempts to treat transient NPCs and immutable players similarly - something (almost?) nobody actually asked for.

People ask for a lot of stupid things.

The purpose behind all of this should be to depict the setting Frontier wants to depict in as plausible a manner as possible, gameplay permitting...not give CMDRs license to run roughshod over the whole game or to be inordinately punitive toward CMDR-on-CMDR violence.

It wasn't people I was murdering. I was asking for a distinction between NPC murder and CMDR (people) notoriety decay rates because the penalty for sprite crime seems too long in human hours.

As far as the in-game authorities are concerned in the in-game setting, NPCs are people. For it to be otherwise would be a gross disruption of verisimilitude and expressly against the stated vision of the game.

You can't murder CMDRs. All you can do, if you get lucky, is send them back to starport for a few minutes of inconvenience.

 

[Iskariot]

Last night I joined a wing mate and helped him with his PVE spec ops missions. Whilst he was on 4/5 notoriety I was still on zero despite killing several 'clean' mission targets. I did think it was odd but my notoriety was still zero when I eventually quit.
Today, upon start up my notoriety was 6 .... presumably needed some time to 'catch up' or what ever.

What is absolutely no fun at all is playing with this level of notoriety just for killing a few NPC ships. I switched on at 10:30 am, and it';s now 5:30pm and still I'm at notoriety level 3. That's 7 hours to drop 3 levels.

Surely, there should be a different kind of notoriety counter for NPC deaths which rest after 10 mins, not an hour per level. It is supposed to be a game after all.
PvP deaths are a different thing and should be treated as such, so no suggestion here to alter this part of the punishment.

/* Rant over */

I think if you kill clean ships then there is nothing wrong with becoming notorious.
In a game world NPC represent real living human beings. If you kill them you are a murderer and will become notorious (if they were innocents). It is a s simple as that.
If notoriety would decrease as fast as you would like then what is the point at all?

Did you know that you can attack clean ships in anarchy systems without becoming notorious?

What the game could use though are more mechanics for criminal game play.
For example anarchy and low sec systems might offer more advantages to criminals, while highsec systems become much more difficult to operate in than currently is the case.
I would also love it if I as a known Bounty hunter would be met with more aggression upon entering a low sec system that is the home of some kind of criminal npc gang.

 

[RamirezKurita]

It wasn't people I was murdering. I was asking for a distinction between NPC murder and CMDR (people) notoriety decay rates because the penalty for sprite crime seems too long in human hours.

In-universe, it was people. Sure, there might not be a real-life outside-context human player at the helm, but why should the in-game universe care about what's happening outside of it? The only difference is that you have a voice on the forums and a full snowflake-grade sense of self entitlement.

The whole point is that we are nobody special in Elite. Nobodies killing nobodies, and the factions laying down the law in response; it's as simple as that. Being a member of the international van drivers union doesn't and shoudn't provide any significant legal protection either, factions are still free to make rules as they please and if anything it makes more sense that they would protect their own more than outside manipulators rather than the other way around.

In short, get off your high horse, strip away all the meta thinking and look at it from the point of view of the "people" in the game.

 

[galahad2069]

why should the in-game universe care about what's happening outside of it?

Because the only reason of the very existence of said in-game universe is the entertainment of the outside real world?

 

[Midian Cabal]

Because the only reason of the very existence of said in-game universe is the entertainment of the outside real world?

For NPCs it doesn't exist.

 

[Bionic Bytes]

In-universe, it was people. Sure, there might not be a real-life outside-context human player at the helm, but why should the in-game universe care about what's happening outside of it? The only difference is that you have a voice on the forums and a full snowflake-grade sense of self entitlement.

The whole point is that we are nobody special in Elite. Nobodies killing nobodies, and the factions laying down the law in response; it's as simple as that. Being a member of the international van drivers union doesn't and shoudn't provide any significant legal protection either, factions are still free to make rules as they please and if anything it makes more sense that they would protect their own more than outside manipulators rather than the other way around.

In short, get off your high horse, strip away all the meta thinking and look at it from the point of view of the "people" in the game.

I think the problem here is that you think of Elite as some kind of simulator. It's not. It's a game, and games have to be fun to play.
Yes, there are rules, but those tend to be mainly for human players because, as a species, we like to cheat and exploit. Hence different kinds / levels of punishment for scripts vs CMDRs.

 

[RamirezKurita]

I think the problem here is that you think of Elite as some kind of simulator. It's not. It's a game, and games have to be fun to play.
Yes, there are rules, but those tend to be mainly for human players because, as a species, we like to cheat and exploit. Hence different kinds / levels of punishment for scripts vs CMDRs.

Simulator and game are not mutually exclusive terms, it's quite possible to have a simulation game after all. It's quite possible to have a game that makes sense by being internally consistent as well as being fun.

The whole point is to have A=A and an internally consistent universe with a bare minimum of fudge factors rather then everything being crazytown where two identical things are treated differently for no discernable reason beyond enraged snowflakes. Another way of thinking about it, NPCs aren't random mobs like in a normal MMO, but consider them to be more like bots in a multiplayer game - AI scripts that are there to substitute for and be mechanically the same as human players rather than providing random mobs to engage like in an MMO.