Commanders Passing In The Night

[grae3107]

Read a few posts about griefing and thought I would throw together a little bit of footage to show that not all PC encounters end up with some one getting killed. There are plenty of friendly people out there.

http://youtu.be/1SpiRh7O1Nc

This is footage from a conflict zone here to show not everyone there kills on sight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pn0-D_g-Go&list=PLHO3z-1RHo8Nz3JwvYadSJDZhbiv4CMdX

 

[Dynamo]

Yup, maybe I am lucky. But I have had no issues of griefing.

In team fights - I have cleared the 6 of of other human players - come to their aid when another human player started attacking them, and vice versa. When under attack form too many NPCs, other players lending a hand.

Similarly in the bounty hunter area - the mining locations - players who have no business shooting each other just leave each other alone - the way it should be.


Shame we can communicate yet - myself in a Cobra and a guy in a sidewinder where chilling out and flashing each other(!!!) in the hanger bay of the capital ship in the distress location.


I know all the current players have paid well to get in the Beta, so are more likely to be "decent" platers, I hope it stays this way as the game opens up.

Still, if not - there is a lot of space to hide in - but human cooperation is nice to see.

 

[Don_Von_Hulio]

Human decency in a game is rare, especially if there is no incentive of being a good person.

So far, besides one single occurrence every time ive died is due to being ganked after committing to a side in a distress. The only way of combating this is to stay neutral and kill any real player to assure you wont be ganged up on if you choose the wrong side. Only a few of the vets pay close enough attention to figure out whats happening, so unless two other players are currently fighting each other its best to wait until your target is by themselves.

This may seem underhanded, but imo its a workaround to a system that currently has no balancing factor.

I also will attack a neutral player on site while in a distress for that reason.

 

[Teefur]

So far, besides one single occurrence every time ive died is due to being ganked after committing to a side in a distress. The only way of combating this is to stay neutral and kill any real player to assure you wont be ganged up on if you choose the wrong side. Only a few of the vets pay close enough attention to figure out whats happening, so unless two other players are currently fighting each other its best to wait until your target is by themselves.

This may seem underhanded, but imo its a workaround to a system that currently has no balancing factor.

I also will attack a neutral player on site while in a distress for that reason.

Hmm, have these "gankings" been by players on the opposing side? That's what's supposed to happen, the distress signals are combat zones. Your "combatting" of this is definitely underhanded and is not a work-around as there is nothing work around. In fact your actions could be interpreted as borderline griefing.

 

[Suul Vellumcore]

Hmm, have these "gankings" been by players on the opposing side? That's what's supposed to happen, the distress signals are combat zones. Your "combatting" of this is definitely underhanded and is not a work-around as there is nothing work around. In fact your actions could be interpreted as borderline griefing.

Agreed.

In fed distress, it's all about the radar screen... one of the most important instruments on your ship. Always leave one eye glued on it... and I mean ALWAYS, even when you're engaged in combat... hell, especially when you're engaged in combat; maintain situational awareness, study friendlies for a moment and see how they react to you (with guns at the ready, of course) before you turn your back on them, and then study them again after a few minutes, just to be sure.

And don't forget that you can still visually see a guy who's running silent - if you're a hawk-eye out there. Visually scan the stars, and you'll be amazed how many tiny moving specs you can see in the distance. Go check them out, and any time you see a ship that you can't lock on to when you get close, beware! That's about the only time I'll attack a ship not knowing for sure which side he's on... dirty, sneaking knaves. Maybe that's wrong, but I chalk it up to survival instincts.

 

[Don_Von_Hulio]

I say its a workaround because there is no way to see the allegiance of another player or how many real players are on one side until you yourself commit. The game also has no balancing yet.

It keeps the interactions for the most part 1v1 unless another player clearly sees me attacking their team member. Greifing is killing a fellow team member, if anything what im doing could be filed under typical piracy.

 

[Suul Vellumcore]

I say its a workaround because there is no way to see the allegiance of another player or how many real players are on one side until you yourself commit. The game also has no balancing yet.

It keeps the interactions for the most part 1v1 unless another player clearly sees me attacking their team member. Greifing is killing a fellow team member, if anything what im doing could be filed under typical piracy.

Honor and self respect. That's why I choose a side immediately. I mean it offers some semblence of situational awareness, as opposed to just seeing all yellow returns. If you see that you've chosen a side which seems heavily outnumbered, throw honor out the door and supercruise the heck out of there. Or, you could immediately go silent the second you enter the battle, chose a side in relative safety from the fringes, and then make your decision whether or not you want to join the frey.

 

[Teefur]

I say its a workaround because there is no way to see the allegiance of another player or how many real players are on one side until you yourself commit. The game also has no balancing yet.

It keeps the interactions for the most part 1v1 unless another player clearly sees me attacking their team member. Greifing is killing a fellow team member, if anything what im doing could be filed under typical piracy.

Killing a fellow team member is "team killing", it may or may not qualify as griefing depending on circumstances, though generally it would. What you are doing would not be filed under typical piracy, it would however be filed under murder.

You commit an act of aggression without having declared a side, you wouldn't receive a bond payment but should increase your bounty. Doesn't your action automatically flag you red to everyone who was in your victim's faction? If you'd simply picked a side, they might have been your allies, and you wouldn't have a price on your head.

As for killing yellows who haven't even picked a side yet... I understand you would kill them from fear they might behave as you do. However, if you hadn't killed them, they may have joined your faction.

 

[deej]

Strange, non-factions show up as an orange for me, anyway, I've seen a lot of CMDRS fly around like this for an entire session so there is a lot of players out there that don't know that they are supposed to choose a faction at the beginning.

 

[mckayi]

I went into Federall distress and before I could pick a side a player in a cobra picked for me by blasting my sidewinder back to the Stone Age...there were plenty of other NPC targets he could have chosen but instead went for a quick player kill....in future he will find himself alone in the dark with no one to help him.....I know his name.....

 

[Void Sun]

I went into Federall distress and before I could pick a side a player in a cobra picked for me by blasting my sidewinder back to the Stone Age...there were plenty of other NPC targets he could have chosen but instead went for a quick player kill....in future he will find himself alone in the dark with no one to help him.....I know his name.....

Be careful that you do not have a bounty when you get to any of the war zones. Go to the pilots federation on the station menus and clear any bounties you have before setting off for conflict zones. If you have a bounty you are fair game, for anyone.

Be careful when you are in the heat of a battle, don't go spraying laser fire and lead everywhere, especially when there are other ships in the background. It only takes one hit on a friendly to get a bounty (for consequences of this see above) and for you to turn from green to red on the offended ships scanner. Stop shooting if there is a risk of collateral damage!

If you follow the above guidelines anyone who shoots you first will get a bounty and therefore become fair game for others. Want to know if someone has a bounty target them and keep them near the center of your view for about 5 seconds, then check the text under the target scanner, it will say WANTED.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Just felt I had to stick my oar in as I was just 'griefed' for the first time last night. I entered a resource extraction zone and was just cruising around looking for targets. I had zero bounty or cargo. There was one CMDR in a cobra on the scanner and as usual I scanned them as I like to see who's around in case I recognise them from the forums and then selected another target. The CMDR opened fire on me without warning and my shields were down before I could react and was dead in less than 10 seconds before I'd made it to the safety of an asteroid. I spent the next several minutes in utter frustration and bewilderment, wondering what on earth was the purpose of this. It's not as if I was a challenge - I was slowly drifting in open space looking elsewhere. I was a sitting duck, and had no bounty or cargo to offer.

Anyway, to go back to what Don_Von_Hulio was doing, this is just as bad. You talk about using a particular tactic to combat griefing, this tactic being to pick off your nominal or at least potential allies unawares and thus ruining the game for some player. Maybe they ended up as bemused as I was. You're griefing, stone cold - think about that and decide whether you want to be instantly fired upon as I will be doing the moment I spot that CMDR again, or whether you want to be part of a team with a sense of cameraderie, imposed or not. It's a game, after all, and you've chosen to play it in a certain way.

B

 

[philmo]

Its really good to see player interaction, and games development will be enhanced when comms come into place.

I often find Human players target each other quickly in combat zones so there are more pickings of NPC after for those bounties. Found it really frustrating last night shoot numerous NPC ships down to low hull strength for another Human to zip in a get the kill.

Now that is frustrating.

 

[Perseus]

. . . .There was one CMDR in a cobra on the scanner and as usual I scanned them as I like to see who's around in case I recognise them from the forums and then selected another target. The CMDR opened fire on me without warning and my shields were down before I could react and was dead in less than 10 seconds before I'd made it to the safety of an asteroid. . .

When you say scanned them, do you mean with a cargo or KW scan? If so, they may have attacked you as a precaution against getting a bounty from your scan.
If you don't mean an active scan then you were just unlucky to meet an aggressive pilot. It happens and it's part of the dangerous background to the game. Encounters are tense events!

With time and with comms ability, we might see a reduction in the itchy finger syndrome.

p.s. it wasn't me either.

 

[Severian]

It's still a bit Walking Dead out there without communication. Around Federal Distress I tend to watch from a distance for a moment, see who the humans are chasing and join them. But if I'm already there and a red triangle appears, I latch onto them right quick.

Early on I used to ignore all humans, and we just zapped opposing NPCs, but after being taken out three times in a row by some forum members while specifically not approaching them, it's game on. If they run and are obviously not a threat I tend to let them disappear though.

 

[Lasse B.]

Just now I had a couple of encounters with Cmdr. K..ll or something like that. My memory for names leaves a lot to be desired. First encounter was when I had just finished two NPCs. One I killed, the other actually managed to escape. I was left with about 25% hull left when said Cmdr. engaged and killed me.

Nothing much to lose in the standard Sidewinder, I went back to the extraction site to continue bounty hunting. I was minding my own business, identifying possible targets via the scanner and killing confirmed targets, when one of the contacts was identified as a certain Commander. I engaged immediately and scored the kill.

On with the show, identifying targets and collecting bounties. I was taking care of some NPC, when all of a sudden something started firing on me from behind. I finished off my target and went to identify my new attacker. Was Cmdr. K..ll again, but this time the surprise attack didn't work too well for him and I got another notch in my belt.

Our 3rd encounter was not one about trying to kill the other, at least from what I could tell, but rather about me trying to send the message that any attempt to do so would be ill advised. He tried to get me in front of his ship, but with no hardpoint deployed. I managed to stay anywhere but there. Felt a bit like a rodeo. A couple of minutes later he was giving up and stood still. Maybe he was trying to figure out whether or not I'd shoot him. I didn't. So we parted ways, and a couple of minutes later while watching the asteroid field from a little above, my client crashed.

Maybe we'll have another encounter some time. I'll try to be on guard.




Yesterday I was also bounty hunting in the same asteroid field. I just finished off an NPC, checked my contacts and found a red colored Sidewinder entry. I locked the target and went to engage. He was a couple of kilometers away, not minding me at all.

It occurred to me the second I opened fire on him that the reason for him being the red entry on my list in the first place was that he was after the same target that I was and I simply got hit by a stray shot of his before he switched targets.

But with my shots having made impact with his ship already, my intentions were just too obvious to have any doubt about them, and with no way to explain my misguided actions against him if I had aborted, I had to finish what I just started.

That was a kill I felt genuinely bad for. Sorry, Commander.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

If you think any of this is griefing then you haven't played online enough. And it's going to end up with people complaining about blockades being griefing because "they don't let me trade in peace and force me to pvp!", or "no e-honour!" flamefests on the forum.

Let's call griefing what it is.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

If you think any of this is griefing then you haven't played online enough.

Because EVE has more aggressive and underhand tactics, and unsociable behaviour, being a little bit better here is okay. Because he murdered that guy with a tank I can murder this guy with a spoon but it shouldn't count as murder because have you SEEN what that guy used?!

I'm perfectly fine with piracy as it's part of the game, but killing another CMDR just for jollies and no benefit is, if you suspend your disbelief for a moment, not something you'd see in the Elite universe except by sociopaths, and they'd quickly find themselves an endangered species.

B

 

[grae3107]

I think it would be good if we could put our own bounties onto others when we are destroyed. We would have to be not aligned to a faction and have no criminal record.

These bounties could accumulate and can not be cleared by the Pilots Federation as they were not issued by them.

I think that if a pilot who likes to "grief" suddenly starts getting large bounties on them they might not like being the centre of everyones attention.

There could also be a filter to stop this being abused such as if the bounty was collected by someone on the targets friend list or who has previously been on the friend list the bounty is not paid and remains in place.

 

[Theaghan Black]

It occurred to me the second I opened fire on him that the reason for him being the red entry on my list in the first place was that he was after the same target that I was and I simply got hit by a stray shot of his before he switched targets.

Given my experience with CFSs I find "Shoulder shooting" really annoying: that means then you're on the target's 6 and a guy behind you fires at it like you weren't there (and at the end he hits you).

But kill stealing is not less annoying: yesterday in the warzone I was chasing a target at 3km but when I saw another player going for that then I decided to change target: as I lowered the AI hull to 10% the same guy came and stole my kill.

I mean, this game is played mostly by +30 and -50... I can't believe there're people of this age that don't understand kill sharing (I'm talking also about other games).

Most of them act like the seagulls of "Finding Nemo".