A group player's experiment in Open as regards the new crime & consequence mechanics.
[EDIT] Cmdr Vizvayu was nice enough to do a dot point summary of the entire wall of text below, so for those who prefer a TL;DR version, here you are:
Now, if you want to read the justifications and explanations and long winded descriptions, keep on reading.
[FORWARD] This ISN'T intended as a post about my experience, the first part's only intended as background to the proposal I put in the second part. Please read it ALL before flaming me.
As you lot probably know I've long been a proponent of group mode for any game play other than PvP. Of course if I mention it I get a bunch of people agreeing with me, and a (smaller but louder) bunch of people calling me carebear and repeating ridiculous slogans like "there's no such thing as griefing", "if you don't like PvP stay out of open" or "the galaxy's big, stay out of places like Lave" so in the light of the upcoming changes to crime & consequence, about ten days ago I decided to put it to the test and started playing in open again. I didn't announce it, I didn't go poking hornets nests in places like Lave or Erivate, I just stayed in my (fairly heavily armed & armoured) Asp, in the backwater systems, and did small scale trading, NPC bounty hunting, and missions (in part to get my Imperial rank up to about the same as my Federal one. I'm now a Lord/Lieutenant). All went swimmingly, no problems, though I got none of the "human interaction" that a lot of defenders of open play have us believe they are so keen on - in fact when I did see other players they usually just disappeared someplace else, rarely if ever even responded to hails, and NEVER initiated them (other than one time when someone asked me what happened to the warzones around a community goal).
All this changed when I changed from my Asp to a Type 7 for a while in order to make some real coin. I took the guns off it but left the shields in place, put in chaff, countermeasures, heatsinks, and point defence (so noone could say I was making a target of myself), beefed up the FSD a bit (why does a large cargo ship come with an FSD incapable of making any decent sort of jump with a large load of cargo? Stupid design choice), and put on B rated thrusters and power distributor. So... on my third cargo run with just over 200 tons of beryllium I was leaving a station and noticed two players in the area... a vulture and an anaconda. The vulture was docked and not moving, and before I could locate the anaconda he disappeared so I figured he'd jumped out or quit the game so I left the station and went on my merry way. I had to fly around and behind the station to get where I was going and had just left the no fire zone and was spooling up my FSD when suddenly my shields were gone with one shot, my hull with the next, and I get the eject warning and see the Anaconda flying around. I figure he'd actually been lurking outside dark and cold then stalked my T7 from behind, and as soon as he left the no fire zone wasted me with two shots, costing me two million creds. No demand for loot so it wasn't piracy, no warning so that I could made some attempt to fight back or defend myself (in fact he went out of his way to remain undetected). Not even a "mwahahaha!" across the comms first so he could say it was role-playing a psycho. It was just shooting fish in a barrel - plain mindless slaughter for it's own sake. I have no doubt he giggled to himself about being such a hero afterwards, however.
Now, this is NOT intended as a whinge (despite the fact that a player with a vastly superior ship thought it was fun to take out a defenceless and unaware one for lolz. It's pathetic but it's also what I've come to expect from griefers, and I'd love to see anyone try to claim this was PvP or otherwise justify it) - as I said it was an experiment that I went into with my eyes wide open . Rather, I intend to make some observations and explore the effect that the new proposed crime mechanisms might have, and make some proposals of my own. (I'm not going to go into the new proposed ramming mechanisms here, they're a completely separate issue and deserve their own thread/s). I need to emphasise too the difference (in my view) between "PvPers", "Pirates" and "griefers" here... they are NOT the same thing and I feel that both PvP and Piracy are legitimate parts of the game (just not parts that I personally seek) so this shouldn't be in any way interpreted as an attack on them. So with no further ado...
As I stated earlier, I spent ten days flying in an Asp loaded for bear and didn't get any interaction of any sort from players. No-one wanted to know me, though I saw plenty of "hollow squares". Admittedly I didn't go to places where it was likely to happen because I wanted the "average" experience and wasn't actually LOOKING for PvP, I wanted to see what the "average" player could expect to happen to them if they minded their own business. My first observation is that despite many assertions that Open Mode is about human interaction and that players are missing out on something valuable by avoiding it I saw none, other than one question and being shot up. I can only assume from this that MOST (not all, obviously) players in open have no interest in the social side of multiplayer. I also found was that while it's true that Open is not "littered" with griefers and they're not lurking behind every star, there definitely ARE some there and that sooner or later you're likely to run into them. It seems though that if you look like you will put up a reasonable fight (FYI my combat ranking is competent... not enough to scare people off but I don't look like a noob either) they will leave you alone, and they generally only go for "easy meals" and "soft targets" like trading ships and starter ships (sidewinders, haulers, etc).
Now as regards the proposed crime & consequence mechanics... the player in question opted to wait until he'd left the no fire zone to open fire. Clearly then he didn't want to have the station open fire on him so he does fear the loss of his ship, however he fired upon a "clean" ship in a non-anarchic system so he doesn't fear gaining a bounty. Chances are once he's gotten to the point of owning an Anaconda he's not short of a few credits so the price of the bounty's not going to bother him... and he's adept in the use of stealth so docking with said bounty also won't present an issue. My guess is that as soon as he toasted me he either went back inside and cleared his name or disappeared to another system where he wasn't wanted. This shows that SOMETHING needs to be done to increase consequences as there are currently none worth mentioning, and full props to FD for making the attempt. Under the proposed system this player would not be able to remove his bounty for a week so that rules out the first option of docking and clearing his name, but there's nothing to stop him going elsewhere. I'm not sure how many human occupied systems there are but it's going to be a few thousand at least so I doubt he'd run out of places to hang out in a hurry. So, the new proposed system will have the effect of preventing players staying in a single system annoying people, but it won't do anything about them going elsewhere to annoy people - so for all the changes in 1.3 it's a very minor consequence indeed. If they don't get caught during this week and the bounty changes to a fine, they needn't even pay it as long as they don't go back to that system again... and if they REALLY want to go back there they just pay a bit of cash and the problem goes away and they're free to do it all over again. Pretty much zero consequence for griefers.
Now let's look at it's effect on piracy. I'm not a pirate (as many of you will know) but again I recognise that it's a legitimate part of the game play (and in fact I was kinda looking forward to meeting a "legitimate" pirate in open - shame it didn't happen). My understanding of piracy is that - like traders - they like to find a "fertile area" where fat cargo ships are likely to pass through and claim that space as their hunting ground rather than randomly flying from system to system hoping they'll meet an appropriate target. Assuming that there's no extra steps put in place in V1.3 to allow for greater "non-lethal" or indeed "non-violent" piracy what's going to happen is that the first time a pirate "makes his move" he'll attract a week long bounty in that system. This will make him a target for both bounty hunters (PC and NPC) which is good for their game play, and also for system security ships (not so good for the pirate's game play). It won't be long before the pirate in question is attracting attention and to stay alive he's going to have to change systems... again and again and again... until someone claims his bounty. This puts pirates (who have a relatively low rate of pay for a high risk) in an even more difficult position and makes them MORE desperate, which will lead to MORE fatalities amongst traders etc.
As I mentioned earlier, I really appreciate the attempts by FD to address consequences of crime, but I fear this system is A: WAY too complicated, so that it's difficult to understand and likely to have lots of loopholes, and B: is a "toothless tiger" for the people it SHOULD be targeting, while having a strong negative impact on those who are actually trying to play the game the way it was meant to be played (and no, I don't think DBOBE wanted to create a game so you could fly around just causing havok and messing up other peoples' games). Real PvP, real piracy, trading etc all need to by sustainable. Even "people roleplaying psychopaths" should be supported, AND should have realistic and proportional responses (seriously, would YOU knowingly let a psychopath dock on YOUR space station?)... but they're the ones who are actually LEAST affected by these changes! For those who would say "wait and see what 1.3 is like", good point, but once these systems come in it's very difficult to get the OUT again and even more difficult to get an alternative IN. Rather we have a system here that's ineffective and targeting the wrong people which will tend to get tweaked, adjusted, modified, and generally manipulated until it's completely ineffective and just a nuisance.
I propose an alternative. It takes a few steps and is probably more complicated to code than the proposed system, but is simpler to understand and more effective... and targets the appropriate behaviours more correctly.
First, the game MUST take murder at least as seriously as blocking a parking bay in a station! Crime must still be achievable however and too this end effective tools for non-lethal crime must be established and/or improved, so that lethal crime can have an appropriate response, but non-lethal crime can still occur. What tools? That part I don't know - I leave that for further discussion here and for FD to solve.
Secondly, we currently have two levels of legal status - fine and bounty. I propose re-establishing the original game's third level of "fugitive", and apply it to all lethal crimes, and have this third level apply across entire major factions. As well as being bounty hunted, fugitives should not be permitted to dock at any station run by that major faction. Fugitive status should last for seven days, AND require that a certain number of gaming hours be spent in the mode in which it was acquired, or higher (ie: if you got the status in group mode you must play X hours in either THE SAME group or open mode, if you got it in solo you must play X hours in solo, group, or open, and if you got it in open you must play X hours in open). Not until the seven days have passed AND you have played the requisite hours in the required modes does it change to a fine and allow you to pay it off. Regular fines and bounties should work as currently proposed BUT the time limit on bounties should be lowered to say 12 hours real time AND a few hours of gameplay time in the appropriate mode, as previously discussed.
Obviously to support PvP there have to be areas where this crime doesn't apply - anarchies, warzones, between wing members, and so on. There could also be a third level added to the "report crimes against me" setting so that you could have your ship report all crimes against you, report only your murder, or report nothing - so that two people could turn off the crime reporting and shoot each other all they liked without getting a bounty or becoming a fugitive. People who create groups should also be able to turn off various levels of crime for group members, to allow lawful, minorly criminal, lethal, or truly anarchic player groups.
This approach targets "people roleplaying psychopaths" in a way that is appropriate ie: "civilised" societies would take a softer approach to more minor crime but a hard line for "psychopathic" crimes, and the frontier anarchy systems would be free to allow it until "the people" demanded a local government that would stop it (we'll make you sherrif if'n you stops the killin' and rustlin', pardner). It would put real, meaningful consequences in place for the worst "offenders" by limiting the ability of the worst offenders to repair, rearm, refuel, trade, claim bounties and so on, while supporting "reasonable" levels of lesser crime by giving them greater tools and allowing a reasonable balance of freedom & consequence in their careers.
- - - Updated - - -
Wow, that's a really long post, aint it? Oh well.
[EDIT] Cmdr Vizvayu was nice enough to do a dot point summary of the entire wall of text below, so for those who prefer a TL;DR version, here you are:
Vizvayu said:
Now, if you want to read the justifications and explanations and long winded descriptions, keep on reading.
[FORWARD] This ISN'T intended as a post about my experience, the first part's only intended as background to the proposal I put in the second part. Please read it ALL before flaming me.
As you lot probably know I've long been a proponent of group mode for any game play other than PvP. Of course if I mention it I get a bunch of people agreeing with me, and a (smaller but louder) bunch of people calling me carebear and repeating ridiculous slogans like "there's no such thing as griefing", "if you don't like PvP stay out of open" or "the galaxy's big, stay out of places like Lave" so in the light of the upcoming changes to crime & consequence, about ten days ago I decided to put it to the test and started playing in open again. I didn't announce it, I didn't go poking hornets nests in places like Lave or Erivate, I just stayed in my (fairly heavily armed & armoured) Asp, in the backwater systems, and did small scale trading, NPC bounty hunting, and missions (in part to get my Imperial rank up to about the same as my Federal one. I'm now a Lord/Lieutenant). All went swimmingly, no problems, though I got none of the "human interaction" that a lot of defenders of open play have us believe they are so keen on - in fact when I did see other players they usually just disappeared someplace else, rarely if ever even responded to hails, and NEVER initiated them (other than one time when someone asked me what happened to the warzones around a community goal).
All this changed when I changed from my Asp to a Type 7 for a while in order to make some real coin. I took the guns off it but left the shields in place, put in chaff, countermeasures, heatsinks, and point defence (so noone could say I was making a target of myself), beefed up the FSD a bit (why does a large cargo ship come with an FSD incapable of making any decent sort of jump with a large load of cargo? Stupid design choice), and put on B rated thrusters and power distributor. So... on my third cargo run with just over 200 tons of beryllium I was leaving a station and noticed two players in the area... a vulture and an anaconda. The vulture was docked and not moving, and before I could locate the anaconda he disappeared so I figured he'd jumped out or quit the game so I left the station and went on my merry way. I had to fly around and behind the station to get where I was going and had just left the no fire zone and was spooling up my FSD when suddenly my shields were gone with one shot, my hull with the next, and I get the eject warning and see the Anaconda flying around. I figure he'd actually been lurking outside dark and cold then stalked my T7 from behind, and as soon as he left the no fire zone wasted me with two shots, costing me two million creds. No demand for loot so it wasn't piracy, no warning so that I could made some attempt to fight back or defend myself (in fact he went out of his way to remain undetected). Not even a "mwahahaha!" across the comms first so he could say it was role-playing a psycho. It was just shooting fish in a barrel - plain mindless slaughter for it's own sake. I have no doubt he giggled to himself about being such a hero afterwards, however.
Now, this is NOT intended as a whinge (despite the fact that a player with a vastly superior ship thought it was fun to take out a defenceless and unaware one for lolz. It's pathetic but it's also what I've come to expect from griefers, and I'd love to see anyone try to claim this was PvP or otherwise justify it) - as I said it was an experiment that I went into with my eyes wide open . Rather, I intend to make some observations and explore the effect that the new proposed crime mechanisms might have, and make some proposals of my own. (I'm not going to go into the new proposed ramming mechanisms here, they're a completely separate issue and deserve their own thread/s). I need to emphasise too the difference (in my view) between "PvPers", "Pirates" and "griefers" here... they are NOT the same thing and I feel that both PvP and Piracy are legitimate parts of the game (just not parts that I personally seek) so this shouldn't be in any way interpreted as an attack on them. So with no further ado...
As I stated earlier, I spent ten days flying in an Asp loaded for bear and didn't get any interaction of any sort from players. No-one wanted to know me, though I saw plenty of "hollow squares". Admittedly I didn't go to places where it was likely to happen because I wanted the "average" experience and wasn't actually LOOKING for PvP, I wanted to see what the "average" player could expect to happen to them if they minded their own business. My first observation is that despite many assertions that Open Mode is about human interaction and that players are missing out on something valuable by avoiding it I saw none, other than one question and being shot up. I can only assume from this that MOST (not all, obviously) players in open have no interest in the social side of multiplayer. I also found was that while it's true that Open is not "littered" with griefers and they're not lurking behind every star, there definitely ARE some there and that sooner or later you're likely to run into them. It seems though that if you look like you will put up a reasonable fight (FYI my combat ranking is competent... not enough to scare people off but I don't look like a noob either) they will leave you alone, and they generally only go for "easy meals" and "soft targets" like trading ships and starter ships (sidewinders, haulers, etc).
Now as regards the proposed crime & consequence mechanics... the player in question opted to wait until he'd left the no fire zone to open fire. Clearly then he didn't want to have the station open fire on him so he does fear the loss of his ship, however he fired upon a "clean" ship in a non-anarchic system so he doesn't fear gaining a bounty. Chances are once he's gotten to the point of owning an Anaconda he's not short of a few credits so the price of the bounty's not going to bother him... and he's adept in the use of stealth so docking with said bounty also won't present an issue. My guess is that as soon as he toasted me he either went back inside and cleared his name or disappeared to another system where he wasn't wanted. This shows that SOMETHING needs to be done to increase consequences as there are currently none worth mentioning, and full props to FD for making the attempt. Under the proposed system this player would not be able to remove his bounty for a week so that rules out the first option of docking and clearing his name, but there's nothing to stop him going elsewhere. I'm not sure how many human occupied systems there are but it's going to be a few thousand at least so I doubt he'd run out of places to hang out in a hurry. So, the new proposed system will have the effect of preventing players staying in a single system annoying people, but it won't do anything about them going elsewhere to annoy people - so for all the changes in 1.3 it's a very minor consequence indeed. If they don't get caught during this week and the bounty changes to a fine, they needn't even pay it as long as they don't go back to that system again... and if they REALLY want to go back there they just pay a bit of cash and the problem goes away and they're free to do it all over again. Pretty much zero consequence for griefers.
Now let's look at it's effect on piracy. I'm not a pirate (as many of you will know) but again I recognise that it's a legitimate part of the game play (and in fact I was kinda looking forward to meeting a "legitimate" pirate in open - shame it didn't happen). My understanding of piracy is that - like traders - they like to find a "fertile area" where fat cargo ships are likely to pass through and claim that space as their hunting ground rather than randomly flying from system to system hoping they'll meet an appropriate target. Assuming that there's no extra steps put in place in V1.3 to allow for greater "non-lethal" or indeed "non-violent" piracy what's going to happen is that the first time a pirate "makes his move" he'll attract a week long bounty in that system. This will make him a target for both bounty hunters (PC and NPC) which is good for their game play, and also for system security ships (not so good for the pirate's game play). It won't be long before the pirate in question is attracting attention and to stay alive he's going to have to change systems... again and again and again... until someone claims his bounty. This puts pirates (who have a relatively low rate of pay for a high risk) in an even more difficult position and makes them MORE desperate, which will lead to MORE fatalities amongst traders etc.
As I mentioned earlier, I really appreciate the attempts by FD to address consequences of crime, but I fear this system is A: WAY too complicated, so that it's difficult to understand and likely to have lots of loopholes, and B: is a "toothless tiger" for the people it SHOULD be targeting, while having a strong negative impact on those who are actually trying to play the game the way it was meant to be played (and no, I don't think DBOBE wanted to create a game so you could fly around just causing havok and messing up other peoples' games). Real PvP, real piracy, trading etc all need to by sustainable. Even "people roleplaying psychopaths" should be supported, AND should have realistic and proportional responses (seriously, would YOU knowingly let a psychopath dock on YOUR space station?)... but they're the ones who are actually LEAST affected by these changes! For those who would say "wait and see what 1.3 is like", good point, but once these systems come in it's very difficult to get the OUT again and even more difficult to get an alternative IN. Rather we have a system here that's ineffective and targeting the wrong people which will tend to get tweaked, adjusted, modified, and generally manipulated until it's completely ineffective and just a nuisance.
I propose an alternative. It takes a few steps and is probably more complicated to code than the proposed system, but is simpler to understand and more effective... and targets the appropriate behaviours more correctly.
First, the game MUST take murder at least as seriously as blocking a parking bay in a station! Crime must still be achievable however and too this end effective tools for non-lethal crime must be established and/or improved, so that lethal crime can have an appropriate response, but non-lethal crime can still occur. What tools? That part I don't know - I leave that for further discussion here and for FD to solve.
Secondly, we currently have two levels of legal status - fine and bounty. I propose re-establishing the original game's third level of "fugitive", and apply it to all lethal crimes, and have this third level apply across entire major factions. As well as being bounty hunted, fugitives should not be permitted to dock at any station run by that major faction. Fugitive status should last for seven days, AND require that a certain number of gaming hours be spent in the mode in which it was acquired, or higher (ie: if you got the status in group mode you must play X hours in either THE SAME group or open mode, if you got it in solo you must play X hours in solo, group, or open, and if you got it in open you must play X hours in open). Not until the seven days have passed AND you have played the requisite hours in the required modes does it change to a fine and allow you to pay it off. Regular fines and bounties should work as currently proposed BUT the time limit on bounties should be lowered to say 12 hours real time AND a few hours of gameplay time in the appropriate mode, as previously discussed.
Obviously to support PvP there have to be areas where this crime doesn't apply - anarchies, warzones, between wing members, and so on. There could also be a third level added to the "report crimes against me" setting so that you could have your ship report all crimes against you, report only your murder, or report nothing - so that two people could turn off the crime reporting and shoot each other all they liked without getting a bounty or becoming a fugitive. People who create groups should also be able to turn off various levels of crime for group members, to allow lawful, minorly criminal, lethal, or truly anarchic player groups.
This approach targets "people roleplaying psychopaths" in a way that is appropriate ie: "civilised" societies would take a softer approach to more minor crime but a hard line for "psychopathic" crimes, and the frontier anarchy systems would be free to allow it until "the people" demanded a local government that would stop it (we'll make you sherrif if'n you stops the killin' and rustlin', pardner). It would put real, meaningful consequences in place for the worst "offenders" by limiting the ability of the worst offenders to repair, rearm, refuel, trade, claim bounties and so on, while supporting "reasonable" levels of lesser crime by giving them greater tools and allowing a reasonable balance of freedom & consequence in their careers.
- - - Updated - - -
Wow, that's a really long post, aint it? Oh well.
Last edited:
