Karma v C&P: What player activities belong to which mechanism?

CMDR_Elver

CMDR_Elver
With a new "Karma" and "Crime & Punishment" system to come in future updates, is it about time to have a discussion or clarity FDev about what player actions are constitute karma or C&P?

The Karma system as I understand it will use data analysis over long time periods to determine and sanction, negative playing styles and cheats etc.

Crime & Punishment deals with in an in-game context illegal (breaking the law in governed space) and illegitimate ("criminal" acts in anarchy space). This is covered by sanctions e.g. bounties/fines/rep. loss/insurance etc. by factions/powers and from 2.4 the Pilots Federation.

What player action should be dealt with by which mechanism? What are the potential sanctions for the different mechanisms and how they should be administered?

Personally I don't see how a karma system can deal with determining the motives for ship destructions, so this should be left to a more robust C&P system. However, Karma could be useful in dealing with issues like Combat logging, that actions are removed from an in-game context. The list below is how I would separate out different player actions regarding the two mechanisms.

Karma
Combat Logging
Trolling?
Improper use of "cmdr block" option. Where block is used for a tactical advantage, not for blocking trolls etc.

C&P
Illegal ship destructions (including griefing and ganking as it is next to impossible to determine motive by statistics)
Ramming (just another form of illegal ship destruction)
all crimes theft/illegal salvage, smuggling, speeding etc.
 
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Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
Given that Sandro recently started talking about a potential karma system in a thread titled "Deliberate Ramming" then one might expect that ramming would also cause karmic consequences.

Ship destruction (of clean ships) is also on the list.

Sandro Sammarco said:
Hello Commander nrage!

Discerning naughty from undesirable would really be such a system's prime function.

so, to spitball a little, here are some potential examples:

* Attacking a wanted ship, no matter how overpowered you were compared to it, would be fine
* Attacking a clean ship when massively overpowered would get minor bad karma
* Repeatedly attacking clean ships that you massively overpowered would get you major bad karma
* Stealing cargo from a clean ship would be fine.
* Being involved in an occasional starport collision would gain you minor bad karma
* Being repeatedly involved in starport collisions over time would get you major bad karma
* Occasionally disconnecting ungracefully in danger would be fine
* Repeatedly disconnecting ungracefully in danger over time would get you major bad karma
* Attacking starports as crew would get you major bad karma

This sort of thing.

Such a system might not be perfectly right in very instance, but punitive measures would increase based on trends over time, which in the end become fairly accurate indicators of intent.

In general, we want to minimise out of game intervention. However, that does not mean that punitive measures would be toothless. We could make life *very* challenging, in ways we currently have not employed, for repeat offenders.

But please remember, as of this moment, this is just discussion, and although we have very positive vibes, there's currently no ETA or guarantee for such a system's arrival.
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AnotherVoice

A
Robert Maynard said:
Given that Sandro recently started talking about a potential karma system in a thread titled "Deliberate Ramming" then one might expect that ramming would also cause karmic consequences.

Ship destruction (of clean ships) is also on the list.
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Could you link the thread please ? i can't find it in his latest post
 

CMDR_Elver

CMDR_Elver
Robert Maynard said:
Given that Sandro recently started talking about a potential karma system in a thread titled "Deliberate Ramming" then one might expect that ramming would also cause karmic consequences.

Ship destruction (of clean ships) is also on the list.
Click to expand...

Yeah the list is useful and something to go on! Not knowing how are what the sanctions for "bad karma" is a major piece of the jigsaw still missing I suppose. My basic concern and hence the thread is what should be dealt with by what system and what players thought about it.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
CMDR_Elver said:
Yeah the list is useful and something to go on! Not knowing how are what the sanctions for "bad karma" is a major piece of the jigsaw still missing I suppose. My basic concern and hence the thread is what should be dealt with by what system and what players thought about it.
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It would seem that the potential karma system is designed to discourage particular player / player interactions that Frontier consider to be detrimental to the health of the game.
 

Muetdhiver

Muetdhiver
Robert Maynard said:
It would seem that the potential karma system is designed to discourage particular player / player interactions that Frontier consider to be detrimental to the health of the game.
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That exactly.

Rule of thumbs : if you behave like a reproductive organ in a non anarchy system, it's probably going to be included in the karma system.
 

CMDR_Elver

CMDR_Elver
Robert Maynard said:
It would seem that the potential karma system is designed to discourage particular player / player interactions that Frontier consider to be detrimental to the health of the game.
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Muetdhiver said:
That exactly.

Rule of thumbs : if you behave like a reproductive organ in a non anarchy system, it's probably going to be included in the karma system.
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Yeah would go along with that, just I think it isn't cut and dried what the Karma system is trying to deter. For example a pirate player would probably more than likely look to attack weaker ships over time this might result in bad karma, intended for seal clubbers. Just think as a general rule "ship destructions" would be better placed in C&P.
 

StiTch

StiTch
Robert Maynard said:
It would seem that the potential karma system is designed to discourage particular player / player interactions that Frontier consider to be detrimental to the health of the game.
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We have our disagreements but in this case I'm gonna say "very well put", provided people remember that "detrimental" applies to multiple aspects of the game that aren't necessarily just random murder.

Bounty based crime handling is technically for breaking laws in-game, and aren't necessarily mutually inclusive or exclusive of karma.
 
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CMDR_Elver

CMDR_Elver
The other side to the Karma v C&P debate is how and what sanctions there are for "bad karma" or C&P.

To my mind in-game shenanigans should have in-game sanctions or in other words C&P. Therefore, reputation loss, fines, bounties, docking privileges & increased rebuy etc.

Karma implies death & rebirth! Although FDev have not mentioned this at all in above threads I would like to throw this out there. Having "bad karma" increases your likelihood of character death if your ship is destroyed. So 10% bad karma = 10% chance of dying when your ship is destroyed, so loosing all credits, ships, ranks etc., back to the sidewinder. Perhaps as you "bad karma" increases, NPC encounters get tougher increasing your chances of death. If get 100% bad karma then it's instance death, no ship destruction necessary.

Obviously it is a bit draconian but isn't that the point to put a lid on detrimental behaviour. Admittedly, I thought of this in the context of Combat logging and not for things like seal clubbing/griefing (which I put in C&P) but could work for that if the karma system was set up for those sorts of detrimental behaviour. Just a thought!
 

StiTch

StiTch
CMDR_Elver said:
To my mind in-game shenanigans should have in-game sanctions or in other words C&P. Therefore, reputation loss, fines, bounties, docking privileges & increased rebuy etc.

Karma implies death & rebirth! Although FDev have not mentioned this at all in above threads I would like to throw this out there. Having "bad karma" increases your likelihood of character death if your ship is destroyed. So 10% bad karma = 10% chance of dying when your ship is destroyed, so loosing all credits, ships, ranks etc., back to the sidewinder. Perhaps as you "bad karma" increases, NPC encounters get tougher increasing your chances of death. If get 100% bad karma then it's instance death, no ship destruction necessary.

Obviously it is a bit draconian but isn't that the point to put a lid on detrimental behaviour. Admittedly, I thought of this in the context of Combat logging and not for things like seal clubbing/griefing (which I put in C&P) but could work for that if the karma system was set up for those sorts of detrimental behaviour. Just a thought!
Click to expand...

I love it when people think up ridiculous forms of karma punishment in the belief they'd be hurting gankers, not realising that the gankers would most likely be less affected than CLers and other exploiters.

I'm gonna have tears of laughter if we ever implement this and start seeing loads of threads complaining about the amount of time people have lost after CLing and not realising their ship can be permanently destroyed after :D
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
CMDR_Elver said:
Obviously it is a bit draconian but isn't that the point to put a lid on detrimental behaviour. Admittedly, I thought of this in the context of Combat logging and not for things like seal clubbing/griefing (which I put in C&P) but could work for that if the karma system was set up for those sorts of detrimental behaviour. Just a thought!
Click to expand...

Sandro has been quite clear - if Frontier could determine definitively that a player had indeed Combat Logged then they would be able to mete out consequences for those players - however they can't.

.... which is why draconian measures are very unlikely to be imposed upon players who might only have a poor connection (that they can do absolutely nothing about).
 

CMDR_Elver

CMDR_Elver
StiTch said:
I love it when people think up ridiculous forms of karma punishment in the belief they'd be hurting gankers, not realising that the gankers would most likely be less affected than CLers and other exploiters.

I'm gonna have tears of laughter if we ever implement this and start seeing loads of threads complaining about the amount of time people have lost after CLing and not realising their ship can be permanently destroyed after :D
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To be fair I wouldn't include gankers in "karma", I'd keep them in C&P. Was thinking more for CLoggers, but it would be interesting! :)
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
CMDR_Elver said:
To be fair I wouldn't include gankers in "karma", I'd keep them in C&P. Was thinking more for CLoggers, but it would be interesting! :)
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It seems that gankers (or those that use highly capable ships against weaker, clean, players anyway) are on Sandro's "to do list" for the karma system....
 

StiTch

StiTch
CMDR_Elver said:
To be fair I wouldn't include gankers in "karma", I'd keep them in C&P. Was thinking more for CLoggers, but it would be interesting! :)
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Not including gankers in karma?

My apologies, this is just something entirely new to me and indeed the forum. The karma system was half conceived to counter the fear of murder in Open, so you'll have to forgive my surprise that there's mention of it not included ;P
 

CMDR_Elver

CMDR_Elver
Robert Maynard said:
Sandro has been quite clear - if Frontier could determine definitively that a player had indeed Combat Logged then they would be able to mete out consequences for those players - however they can't.

.... which is why draconian measures are very unlikely to be imposed upon players who might only have a poor connection (that they can do absolutely nothing about).
Click to expand...

Yeah but isn't karma about looking at trends over time? Clogging is something that stats could deal with. If a genuine bad connection then the player could get some confirmation from the ISP etc. This is about probability of Combat logging over time so metrics could be developed. Also could have a report Combat logging button in comms panel to highlight particularly dubious cases. Just saying if combat logging could be on balance determined, would the sanction fit the crime?

Anyway got to dash.
 
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