I would imagine that some system would need to be put in place to monitor network disconnects, and to see whether or not certain players have a disproportionately high number of them in combat vs non-combat scenarios. May not be as easy as that sounds, though.
Karma vs PvP Piracy
- Thread starter Riverside
- Start date
I would imagine that some system would need to be put in place to monitor network disconnects, and to see whether or not certain players have a disproportionately high number of them in combat vs non-combat scenarios. May not be as easy as that sounds, though.
Since when is quitting a game cheating? I can quit any game at any time without repercussions. Of course you should not exploit this to harm other players. But the problem you describe is rather rooted in the fact that solo actions affect the BGS in open. That's a main issue for PP, to give one example. Clogging in Solo is not the problem.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Challenging indeed.
I'd favour special consideration for those players that perhaps conveniently lose connection after initiating a combative player / player encounter.....
Also, as others have suggested, players that lose connection should require to return to the same mode that they left, for a period of time, ideally the same instance (if it still exists).
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Please, for the love of Zod, don't let the Mistress Of Minions have free reign in this - I like my ships
No, no, no.......give MoM full reign over her NPC's. No more holding her & her minions back!
Don't be a fool, man! You'll doom us all! Dooooooooooom!
Perhaps there could be a special PF Guard (equivalent to military police).
I elaborated on my post a bit with an edit. I'll just throw that in here for the convenience of the readers
Combat logging absolutely must be a part of the karma system as it is something that very much need to be dealt with. Not sure how that is best implemented but I am sure Sandro and the crew can come up with something.
And just to clarify: I am referring to pulling the network cable, task killing or even force shutting the computer down. A system would very easily find out who does this and in which situations. LoL and Halo 5 both have good solutions for this. If logging out via the menu is done that will still be legit but I highly suggest making it longer than 15 seconds. As it is now it is a way too convenient 'get out of jail card'.
Perhaps it isn't for the karma thing after all but rather another feature to prevent combat loggers from relogging for a while if done frequently. Just like in LoL and Halo where you get a cooldown for ragequitting on a REGULAR basis. This cooldown in turn becomes longer and longer if done habitually
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
.... the PF Insurance Adjusters - tasked with recovering costs incurred by errant members....
.... the PF Insurance Adjusters - tasked with recovering costs incurred by errant members....
"Lovely looking Viper you've got there, squire. Be a shame if something were to...happen to it..."
.... the PF Insurance Adjusters - tasked with recovering costs incurred by errant members....
The PFR
Repomen (and ladies).
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Powderpanic
Banned
Combat logging is cheating, no matter what the mode.
There is no ifs or buts about it.
Nice to hear Sandro. Thanks for update!
edit: for those not wanting to read backlog - I asked for balance pass of NPC difficulty curves.
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Unless Sandro states otherwise, combat logging with NPCs are still considered combat logging as far as I remember. Also I would like to point out that combat logging means ending game client *before* danger timer runs out.
Hi Sandro...
I agree with what you're saying here Sandro, but I'd think I'd go further. It's not only the opportunities for challenge that need to be increased against the AI, but appropriate an risk/reward put in place.
It's worth keeping in mind that even in Open, a slow network connection can prevent a lot of instancing, particularly if you're in a strange country where you used to send criminals.
The game difficulty has to be balanced on it's own in Solo.
Let me give you an example of where FD has recently regressed in getting this risk/reward balance right. The 2.3 changes to exploration payouts. One scan of a earth like or water world in the bubble now gives a commander 260,000 credits, enough to buy a detailed scanner, and then every subsequent scan gives over 600,000 credits. This makes early missions pretty much redundant, and this approach is pretty much risk free. It's also a risk free and relatively quick way to increase faction rep and level up to Elite exploration. And you can do this all in the bubble.
Now, FD was right in realising that exploration needed a bit of a buff. But they didn't consider risk/reward. Outfitting yourself for a long distance exploration trip with appropriate supplies, and flying away 1000s of LYs, and constantly risking losing it all is far more risky than hopping around the bubble and frequently selling data. It's the trips into the void that deserved the buff (the side with risk) not hopping around the bubble (the safe approach).
This change to exploration is a good example of why FD get accused both of ED being too grindy (which I'm not sure I agree with) and it being too easy (which I do think is the case). Because it's too easy to make money in a risk free manner hopping around the bubble. But the more dangerous, and perhaps more importantly, more challenging tasks that require more thought, don't have much higher rewards for time spent. So the tendency is to grind, because mindless simple tasks are just as rewarding as complex ones.
ED has to be made both more rewarding and less rewarding. More rewarding for challenging complex task, less rewarding for safe, mindless low risk tasks.
Whilst the game badly needs balancing, fortunately, it's not hard to do. Here are some relatively simple changes:
1. Reduce exploration rewards back to pre-2.3 levels, but greatly increase first discovered bonuses. Do the numbers so explorers outside the bubble make similar rewards to what they do post-2.3 (or perhaps even higher), but hopping around inside the bubble only gives pocket change. Aside from rebalancing gameplay this makes sense from a gameplay perspective, as it makes sense that new discoveries be rewarded many times more than just updated data. As more systems are discovered, the first discovered bonus could further increase.
2. Increase the skill level of the top NPCs, and give them engineered weapons, armour etc, but significantly increase their bounty rewards. Elite NPCs should not hold back, they should do everything except actually cheat. They should be the best your AI team can make them. Ensure that the bounties are such that an experienced and well equiped player makes more money taking on these top NPCs, even when considering frequent trips back for repairs, than grinding out low end NPCs. Even make Very Haz sites which are basically killing zones for any individual commander no matter their ship, that really can only be handled with a wing (and even that's difficult).
3. Ensure there's no way to do "free" stacking, i.e. counting kills for multiple missions, and ensure that bulletin boards don't produce a bunch of missions to the same destination, and perhaps to prevent board flipping exploits just don't show missions to the same destination as one already excepted, unless a player actually flies to another starport. Increase mission rewards to compensate for this, particularly difficult missions.
4. Get the "risk/reward" for cargo trading right. Don't just have a trigger that says pirates attack if you've got 2T of biowaste, but what, how many and their skill level should depend on what's in your cargo hold. A new player should be able to trade a few tons of low value cargo completely unmolested, but a Cutter stacked to the brim with Painite and Slaves should have wings of Elite pirate NPCs all over it all the time. The shieldless Cutter should be relegated to the dustbin of history.
5. Increase the deviation from the "Galactic Average" of commodity prices based on security status. High security systems, even with the items they export and import, should have relatively small deviations from the galactic average. Low security systems should have higher deviations, and hence greater profits, although low security systems will have more and higher skilled NPC pirates.
I know you're doing some of the stuff I've mentioned already, but I think you need to be more radical in making rewards more closely match challenge and risk. It's not a disaster if it takes someone a bit longer to save up for an Anaconda, they'll just get to enjoy he other ships more in the meantime. Reducing the rewards of stuff like in bubble exploration is reasonable if players have the option to do challenging things to get the rewards they're after.
None of these 5 are huge changes, indeed most of them are just mucking around with the numbers involved in the game already. Note when I talk about rewards, especially at the higher levels, it's not just credits but engineering mats. Making more challenging experiences, but also rewarding them appropriately (with not only credits, but high level materials on a consistent basis) will reduce the complains about grinding, and combining that with lowering the rewards of simple low risk activities will encourage players to challenge themselves, not just feel like they're grinding or just racing through the credit ladder too easily.
This post ended up a bit longer than I initially wanted to be, but I hope you find some of my thoughts useful.
I agree with what you're saying here Sandro, but I'd think I'd go further. It's not only the opportunities for challenge that need to be increased against the AI, but appropriate an risk/reward put in place.
It's worth keeping in mind that even in Open, a slow network connection can prevent a lot of instancing, particularly if you're in a strange country where you used to send criminals.
The game difficulty has to be balanced on it's own in Solo.
Let me give you an example of where FD has recently regressed in getting this risk/reward balance right. The 2.3 changes to exploration payouts. One scan of a earth like or water world in the bubble now gives a commander 260,000 credits, enough to buy a detailed scanner, and then every subsequent scan gives over 600,000 credits. This makes early missions pretty much redundant, and this approach is pretty much risk free. It's also a risk free and relatively quick way to increase faction rep and level up to Elite exploration. And you can do this all in the bubble.
Now, FD was right in realising that exploration needed a bit of a buff. But they didn't consider risk/reward. Outfitting yourself for a long distance exploration trip with appropriate supplies, and flying away 1000s of LYs, and constantly risking losing it all is far more risky than hopping around the bubble and frequently selling data. It's the trips into the void that deserved the buff (the side with risk) not hopping around the bubble (the safe approach).
This change to exploration is a good example of why FD get accused both of ED being too grindy (which I'm not sure I agree with) and it being too easy (which I do think is the case). Because it's too easy to make money in a risk free manner hopping around the bubble. But the more dangerous, and perhaps more importantly, more challenging tasks that require more thought, don't have much higher rewards for time spent. So the tendency is to grind, because mindless simple tasks are just as rewarding as complex ones.
ED has to be made both more rewarding and less rewarding. More rewarding for challenging complex task, less rewarding for safe, mindless low risk tasks.
Whilst the game badly needs balancing, fortunately, it's not hard to do. Here are some relatively simple changes:
1. Reduce exploration rewards back to pre-2.3 levels, but greatly increase first discovered bonuses. Do the numbers so explorers outside the bubble make similar rewards to what they do post-2.3 (or perhaps even higher), but hopping around inside the bubble only gives pocket change. Aside from rebalancing gameplay this makes sense from a gameplay perspective, as it makes sense that new discoveries be rewarded many times more than just updated data. As more systems are discovered, the first discovered bonus could further increase.
2. Increase the skill level of the top NPCs, and give them engineered weapons, armour etc, but significantly increase their bounty rewards. Elite NPCs should not hold back, they should do everything except actually cheat. They should be the best your AI team can make them. Ensure that the bounties are such that an experienced and well equiped player makes more money taking on these top NPCs, even when considering frequent trips back for repairs, than grinding out low end NPCs. Even make Very Haz sites which are basically killing zones for any individual commander no matter their ship, that really can only be handled with a wing (and even that's difficult).
3. Ensure there's no way to do "free" stacking, i.e. counting kills for multiple missions, and ensure that bulletin boards don't produce a bunch of missions to the same destination, and perhaps to prevent board flipping exploits just don't show missions to the same destination as one already excepted, unless a player actually flies to another starport. Increase mission rewards to compensate for this, particularly difficult missions.
4. Get the "risk/reward" for cargo trading right. Don't just have a trigger that says pirates attack if you've got 2T of biowaste, but what, how many and their skill level should depend on what's in your cargo hold. A new player should be able to trade a few tons of low value cargo completely unmolested, but a Cutter stacked to the brim with Painite and Slaves should have wings of Elite pirate NPCs all over it all the time. The shieldless Cutter should be relegated to the dustbin of history.
5. Increase the deviation from the "Galactic Average" of commodity prices based on security status. High security systems, even with the items they export and import, should have relatively small deviations from the galactic average. Low security systems should have higher deviations, and hence greater profits, although low security systems will have more and higher skilled NPC pirates.
I know you're doing some of the stuff I've mentioned already, but I think you need to be more radical in making rewards more closely match challenge and risk. It's not a disaster if it takes someone a bit longer to save up for an Anaconda, they'll just get to enjoy he other ships more in the meantime. Reducing the rewards of stuff like in bubble exploration is reasonable if players have the option to do challenging things to get the rewards they're after.
None of these 5 are huge changes, indeed most of them are just mucking around with the numbers involved in the game already. Note when I talk about rewards, especially at the higher levels, it's not just credits but engineering mats. Making more challenging experiences, but also rewarding them appropriately (with not only credits, but high level materials on a consistent basis) will reduce the complains about grinding, and combining that with lowering the rewards of simple low risk activities will encourage players to challenge themselves, not just feel like they're grinding or just racing through the credit ladder too easily.
This post ended up a bit longer than I initially wanted to be, but I hope you find some of my thoughts useful.
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Combat logging is cheating, but logging out via the menu is absolutely fine.
Powderpanic
Banned
Did I mentioned menu logging even once? ( As lame as it is )
Just... don't name it... karma-presence. In fact, if you could refrain from giving it any name inside the universe, that'd be great.
This should be especially true if you're flying the same loop over and over again. If the chance of pirates molesting you increased each time you looped then "grinding" a loop would become a no-go. This detection would have to handle a N-stop loop, or a loop broken by a few extra stops in an attempt to throw it off. Essentially if the commander buys from station X and sells at station Y then within a certain time period repeats this, regardless of the stops in between, call that a loop and incrementally increase the piracy chances each time it repeats.
Alternatively the reward could be based on the linear distance from the nearest inhabited system to the discovery. This would work from a gameplay perspective but it doesn't completely make sense from a lore perspective - why would someone want to pay X% more for information about an earth like world which is twice as far away compared to another. They're probably more interested in the nearby one, to settle on or similar. But, I think gameplay wins out here.