Easy grief and trader fix via insurance

[Miklos Atreides]

OP's idea is silly.

I just don't get it people. You have Mobius. You have solo. So please leave Open alone.

I'm all for improved crime & punishment system and and karma system but some ideas like OP's one are simply ridiculous. Rebuy is a part of game mechanic that provides financial consequences for loosing a ship yet allows one to return to game relatively easily. It shouldn't differentiate whether one lost their ships by crashing planet's surface or by being blown up.

First of all any sane crime & punishment system shouldn't differentiate between killing human players and NPCs. You aren't special snowflakes.

Watering down things won't lead to the game being better.

Agree to this.

First OP's suggestion doesn't help. Correct punishing and crime will help.
Suggetion to get it addressed is if the attacker with received bounty ends up on his rebuy screen he will be held responsible for the loss and damaged he caused.
Pilots Federation suits him to cash in all the rebuys of bounty related attacks they had to pay out to commanders that were summed up since last rebuy.
There is a potential to drive psychopathic attackers into bancrupcy, but it is intended here.
This is just a simple RL mechanic insurances already use today to put regression on you for the willfull damage you caused.

To make it attractive to hunt those commanders
Bounties need to be attractive and security forces need to be harsh on those guys in higer security systems.

Those actions will make open an a little safer place because if not in hottest spots, griefers aren't a major problem.

But systems must be more agile to respond to increasing traffic with dynamically allocated security forces and/or offering
security contracts that will allow you to interdict and shoot down any WANTED pilot in the system for the bounty for a
defined timeframe.

But I said all this already before in different places. Finally I am not sure that things will change quickly.

Regards,
Miklos

 

[NeilF]

Fair. It's just a game. Multicrew and telepresence are far-fetched too. Yet IMHO the outcome isn't positive. Players are relatively safe in the game. NPC aren't really a threat. There's not much challenge for a good, A-rated, engineered, ship. So PvPers including so called griefers are the only element that can pose some danger to the players. I like that risk and that's why I play in Open. I don't want it to be restrained in non-sensible ways. I could tell you that lately almost all the interesting moments in the game I had were those when I was attacked by the "griefers".

I have 650+ ingame hours. I've never killed a human player. But I must admit that if proper C&P and security system was implemented I would consider living a life of crime just because prospect of being a fugitive chased around the galaxy seems quite an attractive one.

Isn't it a sad reflection on a game's PvP gameplay, when mindless interdiction and destruction is deemed as a positive thing? Have our expectations really sunk so low over the past two years we really cannot imagine anything more interesting and challenging that this?

Surely:-
1) The game should be promoting and offering meaningful and interesting PvP gameplay/mechanics in OPEN. Or is randomly destroying other CMDRs (most likely not interested in combat, let alone outfitted for it) the pinacle of gameplay?
2) The game should be penalising more toxic activity. And yes, dedicated combat ships simply interdicting other CMDRs to do nothing more than destroy them without a single ingame purpose served, is as vapid and rediculous as it sounds... Especially when the game does nothing in truth to penalise/prevent it being done over and over and over.

There's better gameplay to be had in ED... And I would have hoped after two years we would have started to see it. But since Wings, there's been basically nothing as regards introducing meaningful PvP content & mechanics.

 

[CMDR Adelind]

You've had a whole bunch of in game reasons for killing unwanted players offered to you in other threads, and you just don't acknowledge them and continue to call it mindless as if you know what's in people's heads.

 

[NeilF]

You've had a whole bunch of in game reasons for killing unwanted players offered to you in other threads, and you just don't acknowledge them and continue to call it mindless as if you know what's in people's heads.

Sorry, you're not be fair there... Seemingly just because you disagree with my POV?

I understand your point - But personally I think there's a more sensible middle ground than where we are now, which is the "illegal" destruction of other CMDRs is all but ignored by the game, indeed even if it's blatantly toxic. Therefore the suggestion for some ilegal destruction to be tolerated (over a given period) before The Pilots Federation decides enough is enough and simply starts make the CMDR in question accountable for their actions. As I've said before... Act like an habitual psycho, start to get treated like one!

In truth, I'd suggest any issues that come about by such an approach are two fold:-
1) True "griefers" won't like their "fun" being reined in.
2) It risks demonstrating how paper thin the PvP mechanics in ED are. ie: The game does so very very little to offer/orchestrate any meaningful PvP. ie: What Powerplay should have done hot on the heals of Wings.

 

[shadragon]

Simply expel griefers from the Pilot's Federation and make a couple of simple changes...

Please detail the list of requisites for expelling someone from the PF and the "simple" changes you see that are required.

If it's that obvious, I'm sure we'd all love to know.

 

[Marra Morgan]

Please detail the list of requisites for expelling someone from the PF and the "simple" changes you see that are required.

If it's that obvious, I'm sure we'd all love to know.

"Simple" is the magic word used by armchair devs to bypass inconvenient things like gameplay balance and developer time

 

[Lateralus]

Hi had a thought. Too encourage traders into solo let them insure cargo at a cost of 5% buy back. Drop hull insurance on T6,7 and 9 to 1%.

Cargo insurance is a possibility, but the buy-back should be higher, say 25% (otherwise the risk factor disappears completely). Rebuy cost should remain the same for all ships.. more ganking will occur if combat players think traders are getting an easy-ride.

But what about griefers? Well they dont care about a 5% rebuys as they often are billionaires via exploits. If you have a billion an 8 million buyback is nothing.
So I suggest that insurance is not valid above 10 million if you die with a bounty on your head. 10 million allows pirates eg Cobra mk 3 to role play. Griefers are hunted down by bounty hunters but no real effect. But if your 160 million insurance maxs out at 10 mill so all you get back is 9.5 million then a billionaire can only afford say 7 deaths. That will reduce griefing big time. Also make bounties stick after death for at least 30 days.

Way too punishing, what if someone gets a small bounty in their Cutter accidentally, then dies? They lose hundreds of millions of credits. Also, imagine how punishing it would be to get speed limit-ganked with your idea in play?

Your ideas go after the wrong players - you want to reduce griefing, but you end up punishing everybody but them (you said it yourself, they are billionaires most of the time, why would this put them off griefing?). Also why should pirates be limited to small ships? Who would be pirating T7s, T9s, Condas etc? They could all just low-wake without any problem.

A boom for anti griefer bounty hunters as a kill would mean something!

Nah, because high-wake...

Here's a more detailed way to discourage mindless murder, but leave core-gameplay in-tact: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/311476

 

[CMDR_Elver]

I don't think you guys realise, PvPer's of whatever flavour pretty much only die when we allow it. This insurance thingy just won't affect me or any of the people I fly with, except to save a ton of rebuy money. I die pretty often because I like fighting to the end, but if excessive penalties were imposed, then I would just concede and high wake.

I usually fly a mid-tier modded FDL, and it takes 6-8 SDC gankers to drop my shields before I escape. As far as I'm aware, there are no other PvP groups who can consistently output that much damage. I have no idea where anti griefer bounty hunters capable of killing us will come from. All of us know, or know of, pretty much everyone of noteworthy skill.

I think the point is C&P have a lot more interesting gameplay for all concerned. What about a bit of griefer on griefer wing action, for bounty and reputation rewards. What if 50 ships were on your tail and had you cornered in a station. The possibility of ship tracking limpets could be a reality in the near future, from the sounds of q&a with sandy. Even biggest ships could be taken down by weight of numbers or at least forced to retreat. The PvP dynamics would be increased immensely with a bit of thought.

 

[BL1P]

Please detail the list of requisites for expelling someone from the PF and the "simple" changes you see that are required.

If it's that obvious, I'm sure we'd all love to know.

Ill have a go



0. Killing a fellow member of the Pilots Federation who is not wanted, in an Anarchy(In bubbles) system or in a conflict Zone = 0.01 Dishonor point.
1. Killing a fellow member of the Pilots Federation who is not wanted, in a lawless(out of bubbles) system = 5 Dishonor points .
2. Killing a fellow member of the Pilots Federation who is not wanted, in a lawful system = 25 Dishonor points.
3. Disabling a fellow member of the Pilots Federation who is not wanted, so he Dies = 25 Dishonor points .
4. Ramming of a fellow member of the Pilots Federation who is not wanted, so you die and he gets punished = 25 Dishonor points.
The pilots Federation reserve the right to add more rules if necessary.

1 dishonor point equates 1% reduction in insurance cover.
When Zero coverage is reached 1 dishonor point = 1 week added to Zero coverage. (not a member of pilots fed any more)
1 in-game day without killing Pilots Federation members removes 1 dishonor point.(time counted from the stats time played)

 

[Skyjack]

I am still thinking that superpower-aligned system controlling factions should sell enforcement licences - that lets you use enforcement ops comms button.

'Enforcement data sent - good luck Cmdr'

What it effectively does is jumps your (or your wing's) instance to the highest illegal kill count in the system, you still have to find them but have the advantage of controlling the instances instead of a random chance.
And throws a 2 week superpower-wide bounty and immediate licence termination at you if you abuse that power and take out a clean ship.

Everyone wins. The PVP gameplay enhanced, the gap diminished, PVE traders and military PVP crowd are more aware and involved with each other instead of existing in different subcultures, have warm feelings and respect seeing each other's ships pass by, the way it would be in real life. Everyone wins except those trying to be edgy, suddenly everything looks like inhabited space not a game arena, all good. Pirates get a good reason to keep killscore somewhat down so it's someone else who tops the list and gets the specops welcome commitee.

 

[CMDR Adelind]

Sorry, you're not be fair there... Seemingly just because you disagree with my POV?

I understand your point - But personally I think there's a more sensible middle ground than where we are now, which is the "illegal" destruction of other CMDRs is all but ignored by the game, indeed even if it's blatantly toxic. Therefore the suggestion for some ilegal destruction to be tolerated (over a given period) before The Pilots Federation decides enough is enough and simply starts make the CMDR in question accountable for their actions. As I've said before... Act like an habitual psycho, start to get treated like one!

In truth, I'd suggest any issues that come about by such an approach are two fold:-
1) True "griefers" won't like their "fun" being reined in.
2) It risks demonstrating how paper thin the PvP mechanics in ED are. ie: The game does so very very little to offer/orchestrate any meaningful PvP. ie: What Powerplay should have done hot on the heals of Wings.

I'm not sure you do understand my point there. I think harsher consequences for crime are fine, but in Elite we make our own meaning. It's in all the other MMO's that we get told what to do. PvP is already meaningful, and self motivated. Sticking it in scripted instances or arenas or whatever it is that constitutes the meaningful PvP other games will kinda ruin the purpose of the big dangerous galaxy. It would also make it even closer to a generic MMO.

Even a public nav lock would solve a lot of griefer problems, it just takes too long to drop on people and save them.

 

[XW_Ziggy]

[Corvette rebuy] That's $40,000,000. That's not something to joke about, a handful of deaths and you're not only broke but unable to rebuy your ship and leaving it parked somewhere as you fly around penniless (and a lot of big ship owners are gonna be high waking come 2.3 since super shields won't be a thing and hulls won't be making up the difference effectively enough).

Yep, I suspect I'll be spending far more time in my FdL and Python if the big ships are too easy to pop with the PVP meta. Losing a fight in an FDL costs me 5 million. Losing a fight in a Corvette costs me 25 million. I don't want to bring 5x the financial risk to the table if FD are balancing the big ships against smaller ones. So far, the beta feedback seems to be that the big ships are far worse off than the little ships, despite the hull changes because malfunctions and escape prevention are very very real things that any PVP beta tester has already adjusted to.

The RC torp meta was a nasty shock to big ship owners back in the day and this is just yet another big-ship-killer mechanic. It seems wrong that the big ships keep being rebalanced to come closer in combat viability and survivability when their costs and rebuys are still so disproportionately high. If two FdL's can reliably kill an Anaconda, why should the 'conda be 5-6x the price? I'd mention the FAS too, but it's going to be nerfed in 2.3 by the lack of huge hardpoints at least...

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I'm not sure you do understand my point there. I think harsher consequences for crime are fine, but in Elite we make our own meaning. It's in all the other MMO's that we get told what to do. PvP is already meaningful, and self motivated. Sticking it in scripted instances or arenas or whatever it is that constitutes the meaningful PvP other games will kinda ruin the purpose of the big dangerous galaxy. It would also make it even closer to a generic MMO.

Even a public nav lock would solve a lot of griefer problems, it just takes too long to drop on people and save them.

I posted an idea about player activated distress beacons, which basic create a public "wing signal" for anyone to drop in to, with ease.
Yes, they will mostly be used as traps.
Yes, you still might not make it in time.

But gameplay!

 

[NeilF]

PvP is already meaningful, and self motivated.

Afraid I disagree there - It's a bunch of paper thin ill-fitting mechanics that generally people are just making do the best they can with IMHO. It doesn't particularly promote and reward "productive PvP", and worse still doesn't really penalise and diswade "toxic PvP".

For example, having just revisited Piracy again recently, I was rewarded with much the same mechanics as I was X years ago, most of which don't really work very well. But hey! At least I can go and design my earlobes now, before sitting on someone else's ship firing mining turrets at asteroids! Progress!

 

[CMDR Adelind]

No argument there, Fdevs logic for continuing to develop things seems circular. There are not many pirates, so not worth developing piracy mechanics, therefore there are few pirates... Rinse and repeat for MuC...

But with the exception of piracy mechanics, public nav locks, ways to access each other, I'm not sure what else we could expect from shooting at each other in space. The PvP mechanics I've played in the other MMO's I've played are barely gameplay, like SWToR. It didn't take long to find an optimal order to use powers, so I lined them up on 1, 2, 3...9. PvP in that was literally pressing numbers in order. I expect WoW was largely the same, but I didn't get that far in. EVE's PvP felt exactly the same as SWToR's when I tried it a couple years ago. Other things I've seen offered are computer viruses, but I don't see how that's different from using Engineer specials. They skip the fights instead of improve them. Some say arenas would be fun, but a combat arena in space is just more space... Planetary combat would be fun, SRVs and ships and fighters all shooting at each other. But it's still just a map change, and we can do that already. PvP missions would be cool, but I couldn't see it improving the fights, it's just another way to dress it up.

Maybe I'm not so much arguing with you, as just not understanding what you mean. Much of what many say doesn't happen in PvP, I do regularly with lots of others, so I find it pretty perplexing. I don't know why players aren't doing it with us, because it would be super fun if they did. I know it's often a pain to find an enemy (or friend), but the whole game is a giant pain the ahrse. Except MuC now, I s'pose.

I guess toxic PvP is griefing, what's productive PvP? Like, getting positive BGS or PP results from killing players, instead of just taking the victims merits away?

 

[Pyrobee]

Hi had a thought. Too encourage traders into solo let them insure cargo at a cost of 5% buy back. Drop hull insurance on T6,7 and 9 to 1%.

But what about griefers? Well they dont care about a 5% rebuys as they often are billionaires via exploits. If you have a billion an 8 million buyback is nothing.

How do you know how other people have make money in the game? The problem with most traders is they set up the weapons on their ships like they are flying a combat ship and hardly ever put defensive weapons on them or use adequate sheilds and have no idea on evasion tactics.

 

[CMDR Adelind]

How do you know how other people have make money in the game? The problem with most traders is they set up the weapons on their ships like they are flying a combat ship and hardly ever put defensive weapons on them or use adequate sheilds and have no idea on evasion tactics.

Yep, my T9 has engine killers, shield breaker and heat mines, the only thing that has killed me so far is a Vette.

 

[Phazon Xenomorph]

LOL @ People who don't understand PvP or big ship expense (Even for billionaires) trying to "Balance" it with gimmick systems they make up. Go ahead and lose a few Anaconda's, Corvettes, or Cutters, those billions quickly drop since the average PvP Corvette / Cutter is a 40mil+ rebuy with standard insurance (unless you were a kicker starter backer who got like 98% covered insurance and only pays 20 mil per, but those are rare to see).

Money quickly goes in this game and post 2.3 it won't be easy to make outside of tedious BH or trading since missions will only stack up to 3 of the same type, and their "buff" to the payouts is probably less than 10% bonus. So money is actually gonna be hard to earn, the way Frontier wanted it. So we're all gonna be in trouble money wise. Oh and if you wanna leave, theres the door, I'm sure the forever in-development Star Citizen will gladly take your money to fulfill your space game needs, but oh wait, that has online too and pay to win mechanics for the kickstater backers who bought real mega ships (think Elite capital ships) with real life cash, who will be ganking from day 1... if it ever comes out.

Shaddup, let Frontier balance it their way, stop coming up with bad "ideas" and "punishments" for PvP'ers when it's you who can't fly properly or panics when interdicted (or breaks the speed limit near stations), and learn to actually get good.

 

[NeilF]

....what's productive PvP? Like, getting positive BGS or PP results from killing players, instead of just taking the victims merits away?

Yes... I guess anything where the game is orchestrating it and deeming it "legal"? ie: Actual tasks, CGs, missions orchestrated by the game itself.

Powerplay would have been an obvious home for this. eg: One Power is trying to take over another system so there are tasks to:-
- Escort a convoy travelling in normal space between Beacon A and B (maybe in an asteroid field)? One Power's CMDRs are trying to protect the ships, the other are trying to destroy them.
- Ship defense. A ship (a capital ship?) is being repaired and one power's CMDRs needs to protect it (& the ships coming in supplying it?) and while the oposing power's CMDRs need to prevent it etc.
- Simply area domination. ie: A beacon somewhere is a flag, and it's just a plane old fight between the CMDRs of two powers.

^^ But all these are legal destruction!

And the same ethos could follow through to new types of PvP orientated CG mechanics, or indeed even missions putting one wing of CMDRs against another.


Now there's loads of ifs and buts about how these sorts of things would work, but that's another thread The important thing is for the game to actually start promoting/orchestrated (legal/productive) PvP surely?

 

[CMDR Adelind]

Yes... I guess anything where the game is orchestrating it and deeming it "legal"? ie: Actual tasks, CGs, missions orchestrated by the game itself.

Powerplay would have been an obvious home for this. eg: One Power is trying to take over another system so there are tasks to:-
- Escort a convoy travelling in normal space between Beacon A and B (maybe in an asteroid field)? One Power's CMDRs are trying to protect the ships, the other are trying to destroy them.
- Ship defense. A ship (a capital ship?) is being repaired and one power's CMDRs needs to protect it (& the ships coming in supplying it?) and while the oposing power's CMDRs need to prevent it etc.
- Simply area domination. ie: A beacon somewhere is a flag, and it's just a plane old fight between the CMDRs of two powers.

^^ But all these are legal destruction!

And the same ethos could follow through to new types of PvP orientated CG mechanics, or indeed even missions putting one wing of CMDRs against another.


Now there's loads of ifs and buts about how these sorts of things would work, but that's another thread The important thing is for the game to actually start promoting/orchestrated (legal/productive) PvP surely?

This is where my confusion comes from. It's already there, almost as you say, but without instructions. I'm an Imperial PPer too, and we do the convoy one a lot between the Empire and the Federation, I think the teams are called Killjoys and Reapers respectively, but it's between stars and the station with interdictions rather than beacons. But the convoy is piloted by humans too. Ship defence doesn't seem much different to fighting in a CZ with a capital, but there's no NPC's? Combat zones of any kind without NPCs would be cool. Area domination is most of what the PvPers at CG's do. We grab someone, then fight over that space until there's no one left for one side to nav lock new players into the instance. Do it enough and eventually one side will dominate supercruise too. When I've been on the losing side, we have to jump and fly in formation so we don't get separated as soon as we jump back in, and try to take the system back to make it safe for Imperial pilots or whatever. It's heaps of fun, and I think a lot of people would play if they knew, but so many just assume we're all murderhobos and PvP is pointless. Noob defence is a thankless task I tells ya