Crime and Punishment not fit for purpose - needs overhauling

[gorankar]

As PvP is optional, I don't think the crime and punishment system should revolve around it. You can almost always nope out of PvP in open unless you are in a paper ship or you have cheaters one shotting you in your Phantom with size 5 prizmatics and a couple boosters on. The other modes are generally PvP free. Got one shot today by obvious cheater, I just blocked them and will never have to deal with them again. So again, I don't think balancing for PvP in a PvP optional game is the right way to go about it.

Criminal activity should be handled better. But I am more of a mind that the system itself really only needs tweaking, and what really needs to be fixed is how capable the NPC's and their ships are. A military NPC only module to prevent high wake within 3-6KM would not be a bad thing either. If I am out doing a civilian massacre in a well engineered FDL/Krait2/Python2, ATR should be showing up in numbers in ships engineered to the same level as mine and be piloted by truly Elite NPCs that work together to get rid of me. They should have a better than average chance of killing me.

 

[angusmadmac1]

When it comes down to it the player killers don't have the Risk. All the risk is on the victim . Explorer coming back loses the data and money , trader the profits , mission runner the inf.
I also believe that if you haven't got some defences your insurance should be invalid.
If you attack ( for no reason ) in fed/ imp/alliance or PP space then you should be person non gratia in those areas. Your access to ships, engineers should be limited.
Your bounty should take into account what ever was lost and that money should go to the victim who has decent defensive capabilities.
The aggressor only gets a small slap on the wrist and ATR ( ohhh scary ( sarcastic remark)) and some limited access in that system, it's not even impounded.
They have no risk, which means they continue to do it
Please note I have said for no reason if it's PP or BGS then it's like a CZ you picked the wrong side .

 

[ꝁestrel]

Ganking would not be a problem (and its really not now, honestly when you care to learn a few tricks) if the game as a whole made more of an effort to push unlawfuls away using other things like the BGS.

Maybe.

The problem is at end game you have people with tens/hundreds of billions of credits, all the best ships fully engineered, and no interest in anything other than blowing up players. No amount of bounties or notoriety is going to hold them back. Not to mention that in Elite PvP there's almost always a way to escape if you feel like you're losing the fight. So if a ganker encounters resistance they can just dip out.

Say you pushed the gankers out into outer bubble Anarchy systems. All you'd be doing is making sure they do their grinding out there. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to lawful space for a fun night of seal clubbing.

And where did they go to sell it? This illustrates the mindset of 'anywhere at any time in anything' and it causing problems. When I was doing granular C+P testing I scouted for systems that had never seen players (at least, not for weeks on end) so I could get firm results. They exist in plentiful numbers on the fringes and with planning decrease the chances of attack. If you want to be in open with such high stakes you can't be causal about it.

You're not wrong in principle but the part about "if you want to be in open with such high stakes" is the key point of contention IMO. A lot of people don't want to play a high stakes open world MMO. High stakes are only fun if you enjoy that aspect of the game. That is to say you enjoy cat & mouse gameplay, combat mechanics, and adversarial gameplay overall.

If players are unwilling to take steps to even be able to escape, or weigh up the risk of a particular system no C+P on earth will help them.

Rinzler put out a guide for surviving a gank 7 years ago (link). Since then there have been countless video guides, text guides, etc on what to do. It's changed nothing and that's really my point. It's just the reality we live in. People who aren't into combat (for whatever reason) aren't going to bother.

It's not because people are dumb or lazy btw. It's just not the game they signed up for and there are various legit reasons why.

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ, etc establish very early on that it's a high stakes game where you'll lose your stuff constantly. And no one there complains about KoS because it's part of the game. But even in those games... Eve heavily disincentivizes high-sec ganking, Tarkov has low-level-only maps, and DayZ encourages modding so people can play on the servers with rules they like.

 

[Darrack]

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ

We certainly don't want ED to become like any of those, especially Eve.

O7

 

[ꝁestrel]

But in FE2 terms that's the wrong way to think of it: your trade profit is your reward for getting the cargo past the pirates, which is why that game doesn't need separate Trade and Combat ranks: an Elite Combat pilot is an Elite Trader if they want to be.

Let's say I'm your average trader in a Python. I'm not going to use a Cutter with prismatics as an example because that's out of reach for most players until they play the game a lot. You can replace the average Python with the average exploration Asp/DBX or whatever.

If I enter a system and get interdicted by NPC pirates I can always escape with minimal effort. I don't need chaff. I don't need to boost toward the attacker. I don't even need to submit to the interdiction so that FSD recharge time is minimal. I don't need to high-wake since the NPCs won't harass repeatedly. I do need to do something but that something is just using basic flight mechanics. The only way to die is being AFK or running a shieldless Asp with 300 armor. It's predictable. And most importantly: I can still accomplish my objective by reaching the destination and selling.

But as soon as you introduce a PvP blockade everything changes:

• Most of the time the only option is to high-wake and therefore not accomplish the objective.
• Escaping a competent ganker does take some skill. You can't just boost forward and leave.
• The attacker risks absolutely nothing and there's no practical way to make them leave the system.

That's the big difference between your FE2 example and what we're talking about here. The balance of power is completely lobsided in these PvP murderhobo/ganker/griefer/whatever encounters. The attacker risks nothing and the defender risks everything.

C+P aims to solve this problem by creating long term consequences for the attacker (they ostensibly "risk" something by gaining notoriety, for example). But in reality the "punishment" part of C+P isn't much of a punishment at all.

 

[ꝁestrel]

If you attack ( for no reason ) in fed/ imp/alliance or PP space then you should be person non gratia in those areas. Your access to ships, engineers should be limited.

Agreed but I think it needs to be more extreme.

Anything done for a mission, bounty hunt, CZ, Power Play, etc (legit PvP) is not counted. This is really important. And if players have "Report Crimes Against Me" turned off then it shouldn't count. Basically we need to allow for PvP if people are doing it willingly or have some cause for it.

Ok now let's say I do some ganking in fed/imp/alliance space. Consequences:

Banned from lawful space
I can't use services anywhere in that space. Not to rearm. Not to repair. Not even to refuel. Not even at FCs. Not even my own FC. Not at ground outposts even if they're owned by an Anarchy faction. I'm completely banned from all lawful space for some period of time. I can only use services in systems owned by a faction that's in Anarchy.

Security rams their fist in my face
High-sec should be completely unsurvivable for me. Winning interdiction mini-game is impossible. I should be attacked by ships that perma-lock my FSD and have 100,000 DPS.
Med-sec should be the same as high-sec but they show up later. Winning interdiction mini-game IS possible. If you lose the mini-game you die.
Low-sec should be the same as med-sec but they show up even later.

Huge reputation loss with lawful factions
If I do my ganking in Federation space then I lose a big chunk of reputation with them. Something like every kill would cost 1 hour of rep grinding. Reputation with local factions should instantly drop a full level for every kill. So if I decided to gank in Robigo then I'd have to rebuild my rep there again.

Black market and illegal mission payouts go WAY up
10x (or more) increase in rewards for illegal missions.
5x (or more) increase in payouts for selling illegal stuff at a black market.

Anyway there's more than can be done and fine-tuned but that's generally how I think it should work. It makes repeated ganking in high-sec systems impractical but still possible for people who really want it. If someone does get ganked they know that the attacker just completely screwed themselves for a while.

It simply wouldn't make sense (from the attacker's POV) to destroy some random shieldless Asp because they'd need to spend 1+ weeks grinding for the ability to do it again. But if they realllly didn't like that CMDR (lol) then it is what it is

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I think it’s a pity that frontier adopted such a ‘opt-in policy for pve’. Currently only AX combat requires high level skill, annd to do that you have to go to specific areas. Most players expect to fly around the inhabited bubble without really being obliged to engage in combat, even in anarchy systems or those controlled by hostile powers. Most players just don’t see jumping into an anarchy system as an ‘opt in’ to real danger, so the huge gap between the pvp and pve experience continues.

 

[Shir]

Pve vs Pvp ship ain't much of a fight really. Especially if the Pvp ships are at least two, which they often are, one hit will disable shields, second one (from the other ship) will disable drives, end of story. No numbers will help, if the Pvp players are even a bit decent it all ends in a few seconds.

 

[Frankymole]

I think it’s a pity that frontier adopted such a ‘opt-in policy for pve’. Currently only AX combat requires high level skill, annd to do that you have to go to specific areas. Most players expect to fly around the inhabited bubble without really being obliged to engage in combat, even in anarchy systems or those controlled by hostile powers. Most players just don’t see jumping into an anarchy system as an ‘opt in’ to real danger, so the huge gap between the pvp and pve experience continues.

Yes, I must admit Anarchies are a real disappointment coming to ED after the original Elite game on the BBC and Spectrum. There, Anarchy systems are something to be feared and you take your life in your hands going into or through them.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yes, I must admit Anarchies are a real disappointment coming to ED after the original Elite game on the BBC and Spectrum. There, Anarchy systems are something to be feared and you take your life in your hands going into or through them.

Only at the start. Once you had your ship well equipped they were no problem at all.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Maybe.

The problem is at end game you have people with tens/hundreds of billions of credits, all the best ships fully engineered, and no interest in anything other than blowing up players. No amount of bounties or notoriety is going to hold them back. Not to mention that in Elite PvP there's almost always a way to escape if you feel like you're losing the fight. So if a ganker encounters resistance they can just dip out.

Say you pushed the gankers out into outer bubble Anarchy systems. All you'd be doing is making sure they do their grinding out there. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to lawful space for a fun night of seal clubbing.

My point was partly from an ideal ED (as in the game is credit poor and engineering is limited) but also (I think as I said in another post) if you lock out legal money making missions you can't grind out legal money- so there would be a point where criminals would have limited choices and getting top end ships is harder.

Say you pushed the gankers out into outer bubble Anarchy systems. All you'd be doing is making sure they do their grinding out there. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to lawful space for a fun night of seal clubbing.

And? Thats up to them risking coming back- I'd also point out that they are spending less time in legal systems. You might not like how they play but its not against the rules either.

You're not wrong in principle but the part about "if you want to be in open with such high stakes" is the key point of contention IMO. A lot of people don't want to play a high stakes open world MMO. High stakes are only fun if you enjoy that aspect of the game. That is to say you enjoy cat & mouse gameplay, combat mechanics, and adversarial gameplay overall.

Then thats on them, again. They know what Open is about- if they don't want the risk then don't be in Open to begin with because you have to be cautious. Going back to my example of border systems- you don't have any cat or mouse there and the information is available (and with a bit of thinking) on INARA. Ten minutes of reading and job done.

Rinzler put out a guide for surviving a gank 7 years ago (link). Since then there have been countless video guides, text guides, etc on what to do. It's changed nothing and that's really my point. It's just the reality we live in. People who aren't into combat (for whatever reason) aren't going to bother.

It's not because people are dumb or lazy btw. It's just not the game they signed up for and there are various legit reasons why.

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ, etc establish very early on that it's a high stakes game where you'll lose your stuff constantly. And no one there complains about KoS because it's part of the game. But even in those games... Eve heavily disincentivizes high-sec ganking, Tarkov has low-level-only maps, and DayZ encourages modding so people can play on the servers with rules they like.

If they don't bother then again, its on them for not even trying in a game that frankly does not care about killing. If these guys knew the drill to escape, did some homework on least traveled systems and swapped to a more survivable ship they'd be fine. Like it or not you can't cut out the possibility of an NPC or player attacking you in ED.

 

[Rubbernuke]

But again why should we have to bother? why should we be someone else's entertainment just because they can? Again the attacker looses naff all, a trader is never going to kill them, sure its pretty easy to submit and escape but then what's the point? Its just wasting my time.
No thanks i will stay in PVE mode.

O7

Because its a game where not everyone does what you like, and that random people will do random things.

The problem is PvE is easy, and PvP much harder (at least against a skilled opponent). Do you also get annoyed at NPC interdictions? Or do you tolerate them because they are easy? The issue here is if they are too easy they are pointless and PvE players have gotten used to that.

 

[Rubbernuke]

My sheldless but heavily armored T9 has yet to be destroyed and has been interdicted a fair few times. Some people just like to be blown up I guess.

I do still believe that fdev could effectively lock notoroius players out of high sec systems, but as long as a single player gets their ship destroyed we’ll be here talking on the forums about the morals of it.

This is the other problem- over-reaction. But even then if such a system was put in, people who attack others would actually like it if it was fair and leveraged gameplay to achieve it.

I know I certainly would, and hope PP V2 does this.

but as long as a single player gets their ship destroyed we’ll be here talking on the forums about the morals

To make a C+P system that leverages gameplay by default also requires players to use gameplay to escape. If players never use the tools available then no C+P system will ever work.

 

[ꝁestrel]

My point was partly from an ideal ED (as in the game is credit poor and engineering is limited) but also (I think as I said in another post) if you lock out legal money making missions you can't grind out legal money- so there would be a point where criminals would have limited choices and getting top end ships is harder.

That would be entirely different game though. I understand what you're saying but that would be a complete rethinking of the game's economy. And even then I'm not convinced you can even make an MMO-ish game where players are strapped for cash. In every game with an economy the people who play regularly are incredibly cash rich. So the only people who would suffer these consequences are newer/inexperienced players that don't know what they're doing.

In the end you'll be back to square one: billionaires in FDLs fighting whoever they want with no risk/reward in play.

And? Thats up to them risking coming back- I'd also point out that they are spending less time in legal systems. You might not like how they play but its not against the rules either.

And... it doesn't stop them from visiting legal systems whenever they feel like it. So then what's the point? Roleplay? Unlawful players grinding for credits/rep/etc aren't an issue at all.

If they don't bother then again, its on them for not even trying in a game that frankly does not care about killing. If these guys knew the drill to escape, did some homework on least traveled systems and swapped to a more survivable ship they'd be fine. Like it or not you can't cut out the possibility of an NPC or player attacking you in ED.

It's true that the game doesn't care about killing. And it's also true that the game doesn't care about organic PvP. The fact that someone can hop into solo/group and invisibly affect the BGS or Power Play completely removes anything interesting about it as competitive territory control IMO.

So, yes, it's "on them" for not wanting to learn gameplay they're not interested in.
And it's on pirates/gankers for zero risk attacks on space dads who don't stand a chance.

The result? PvP is avoided by going invisible in solo/group nullifying true competition over resources. And organic PvP is zero risk, skill-less, and boring. Everyone loses.

 

[Rainbro]

You're not wrong in principle but the part about "if you want to be in open with such high stakes" is the key point of contention IMO. A lot of people don't want to play a high stakes open world MMO. High stakes are only fun if you enjoy that aspect of the game. That is to say you enjoy cat & mouse gameplay, combat mechanics, and adversarial gameplay overall.

It's just not the game they signed up for and there are various legit reasons why.

Games like Eve, Tarkov, DayZ, etc establish very early on that it's a high stakes game where you'll lose your stuff constantly. And no one there complains about KoS because it's part of the game.

I do find it interesting how this opinion has taken root in Elite, because as you point out, in other games people don't complain. But what makes it "part of the game" in those and not Elite? When the game gives you full control over what level of player opposition you might see, why does this keep coming up?

You mention that those games "establish very early on" the stakes, and Elite could certainly do a better job of communicating the power gap between NPCs and players and how to deal with that. But I also wonder if giving that choice did somehow lead to the idea that being completely safe in Solo is the "true" game, and therefore Open is out of place for going against that. The game gives effectively no useful information on how to survive these encounters, yet there's a big button on the main menu that says "never get attacked again". I wonder if those other games would see similar effects if they also included a button to deny all player opposition.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Security rams their fist in my face
High-sec should be completely unsurvivable for me. Winning interdiction mini-game is impossible. I should be attacked by ships that perma-lock my FSD and have 100,000 DPS.

Most, if not all of what you talk about is good, except for this which I dislike- mainly because then ships become gamey and more powerful than stations.

I can see the logic, ATR would not be required if engineering was not so crazy. Since we do there are other ways of achieving this without extreme solutions.

So what can be done? For me ATR should become random and not system level only. They currently have no BGS persistence, so what needs to happen is at certain thresholds they become 'unchained' and free roaming -where you go at least one will pop up and follow you about, drop when you do and be a nuisance. Things like this https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-npc-player-scan-spawns-an-atr-vessel.533172/ would also help because then all a trader needs to do is survive long enough to scan someone (but this relies on a trader willing to actually touch the controls). If you changed it so that trigger the highest ATR response possible (full wing, NPC pre locked on, instadrop) which would be fairer as it gives the attacker a way to avoid it. IIRC at least once (although it might have been chance) I was hit with a FSD disrupting effect from ATR- but using what we have (Grompedoes) are enough.

In this manner C+P at the top end then follows you rather than being system only and tied locally.

 

[rootsrat]

Again, let's not derail this into open/solo. There is a dedicated thread for that and it's linked in the OP.

Thanks.

 

[Rubbernuke]

That would be entirely different game though. I understand what you're saying but that would be a complete rethinking of the game's economy. And even then I'm not convinced you can even make an MMO-ish game where players are strapped for cash. In every game with an economy the people who play regularly are incredibly cash rich. So the only people who would suffer these consequences are newer/inexperienced players that don't know what they're doing.

In the end you'll be back to square one: billionaires in FDLs fighting whoever they want with no risk/reward in play.

In the end you can't stop people doing what they want. If a pirate becomes rich doing pirate things, thats them playing the game. Bear in mind too this also is from a game where engineering is low, and that the BGS would make criminal missions much harder (and that pirates would have to scavenge more or risk more to get rich).

For C+P to work like people want requires a total reset because its the backbone of the game and a lot of problems have come about because FD did not think long term.

And... it doesn't stop them from visiting legal systems whenever they feel like it. So then what's the point? Roleplay? Unlawful players grinding for credits/rep/etc aren't an issue at all.

You can't lock out people because they shoot at you in ways you don't like or understand. If thats your mindset then you have solo or PG.

It's true that the game doesn't care about killing. And it's also true that the game doesn't care about organic PvP. The fact that someone can hop into solo/group and invisibly affect the BGS or Power Play completely removes anything interesting about it as competitive territory control IMO.

So, yes, it's "on them" for not wanting to learn gameplay they're not interested in.
And it's on pirates/gankers for zero risk attacks on space dads who don't stand a chance.

The result? PvP is avoided by going invisible in solo/group nullifying true competition over resources. And organic PvP is zero risk, skill-less, and boring. Everyone loses.

Ganking would not live in peoples heads rent free if everyone knew how to avoid it or deal with it. You do have other modes for that, but if low level ganking was nullified at nearly every turn how long would it be before they got nothing out of it?

 

[metatheurgist]

I'm all for removing the Fantasy MMO +5 item engineering (that in no way fits in this game) anyway. Now that mats are becoming as bankrupt as creds the drain circling has already begun.

 

[Muzz UK]

My two biggest questions around C&P are these.

1. Why in a high security systems can you still gank, murder and attack others freely at will? surely certain areas even though it might be lore breaking should have a weapons disabled grid or tech?

2. Why is there no crime bad guy career route? Plenty of people want to gank, murder and steal why are the mechanics in game not sorted for this yet?dw

3. Why have some of the features and mechanics for being a bad buy not been copied across from Frontier Elite II and First Encounters?


I honest think Powerplay 2.0 being open only or this brand new feature coming in january needs to be PvP related, implementing a proper PvP mode will give the players who want to fight eachother a way to do it. This would solve a few C&P problems but the system needs a strict rework.