Missions to Remove Notoriety

[Schmack]

Notoriety is a decent idea for minimizing ganking/griefing etc. It doesn't seem to work well with missions though. I'd like to see something akin to federal or imperial missions to help remove notoriety. Example would be to restore power for settlements, retrieve escape pods, kill thargoids, etc. I know you'll lose notoriety anyhow if you do these things, but it doesn't feel like it's part of the game world that notoriety just magically goes away if I leave my ship idling on a pad at my carrier overnight vs community service or something along those lines. It would at least give some incentive to take illegal missions (other than the materials, because no one takes these for the paltry financial offerings) if you knew that you could take a risk if you had the ability to run an extra community or support mission or two in order to clear the air with the authorities.

Personally I don't mind notoriety, I run at 6 most of the time because it's more fun for me to not care about it and do whatever I want than to comb the boards for legal missions, or to farm anarchy stations. I just want an option to do other things to affect it besides "go do something else like explore plants" Yeah, no thanks.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Notoriety has nothing to do with ganking and was never intended as such. It used to be that all you'd need to do is step into a clean ship and you can dock anywhere. Now you could just dock at a settlement or fleet carrier. That's no limitation on ganking (again - as intended).

I would try looking again at rewards for criminal gameplay. Political assassinations go up to 7.5 million each if you're allied and if you can find an anarchy settlement with a few of these on offer you can rack up some cash pretty quickly (especially as you can yank them out of supercruise around the main star once you first get to the target system). The horizons variant where you have to scan a beacon first has rewards around 9 million when you look at what you get when you cash in.

Massacre missions go up to 50 million for 30 ships as well. Then there's horizons settlement scans/power generator killing missions which can easy make 50 million an hour if you can get a bunch of them.

None of those things will add to notoriety either, so long as you avoid killing non-mission targets.

Granted, some of the other missions do need a look at, but I'd suggest that needs doing across the board with some legal missions as well.

If you're talking pirating NPCs as well, yes, that's pretty much a pointless activity (looking purely at credits per amount of time taken) and definitely does need a look at.

 

[Riverside]

The way I play is to maintain a squeaky clean persona, paying off fines & bounties ASAP & generally being allied with every faction, so it's very rare I gain any notoriety & if I do it's an inconvenience that I can't pay off any bounties & so maybe can't pick up new missions from a dock controlled by a faction I am undermining. It's not unusual for me to be hostile to a faction during contested (space) wars but that's a separate issue.

So for me if I gained one point of notoriety it would be very handy to be able to take some other mission that removes it. Logistically that's not too dissimilar to me detouring to a station with an interstellar factor to get rid of a bounty with zero notoriety. In that sense I like the idea.

It seems to me though that mission probably should take some time & maybe there should be some sort of timer such that only one or two of those kind of missions can be completed in any given 2 hours of real time (I don't think it would have to be time played) so it doesn't get cheesed too much but it would allow those that rarely play to get rid of high notoriety more quickly than just wastefully leaving the game AFK for ages.

 

[Rainbro]

Notoriety has nothing to do with ganking and was never intended as such

Pretty sure it was. It was completely ineffective and badly designed, sure, but it was supposed to be a deterrent to ganking.

If we're assuming the implementation was perfectly emulating Frontier's intent, I struggle to think what intent they could have had other than to mildly inconvenience people who haven't bought Odyssey for the on-foot shipyard, and to encourage people to commit a murder for the sake of paying off their 100cr fine.

The whole thing has so many holes nowadays they'd be better off scrapping the whole system.

 

[Riverside]

Pretty sure it was. It was completely ineffective and badly designed, sure, but it was supposed to be a deterrent to ganking.

If we're assuming the implementation was perfectly emulating Frontier's intent, I struggle to think what intent they could have had other than to mildly inconvenience people who haven't bought Odyssey for the on-foot shipyard, and to encourage people to commit a murder for the sake of paying off their 100cr fine.

The whole thing has so many holes nowadays they'd be better off scrapping the whole system.

Notoriety and interstellar factors replaced week long bounties that didn't remain on rebuy. It closed the suicidewinder exploit very effectively, but was essentially a PVE tool that encouraged criminal activities more than the week long bounties did.

The mechanism as-is punishes light criminal activity but is pretty toothless for more dedicated crime (and is a badge of honour to many career criminal players I've met)

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Pretty sure it was. It was completely ineffective and badly designed, sure, but it was supposed to be a deterrent to ganking.

If we're assuming the implementation was perfectly emulating Frontier's intent, I struggle to think what intent they could have had other than to mildly inconvenience people who haven't bought Odyssey for the on-foot shipyard, and to encourage people to commit a murder for the sake of paying off their 100cr fine.

The whole thing has so many holes nowadays they'd be better off scrapping the whole system.

Well all I can say is that if it was to limit ganking and not curtail some kind of BGS activity that they wanted to limit, it was done without any assessment of how ganking works.

While we're on the subject of crime and punishment - something else I have noticed with Odyssey as well is if can anyone tell me what the point fines are apart from being a worse punishment than bounties? It used to be that fines could be paid off regardless of notoriety because they were for lesser crimes. Now we have a situation where they lock you out of station services, require notoriety 0 to pay off and further than that, can't be expunged by handing yourself in.

Best don't fail any missions with cargo or things like power restoration missions.

 

[Brrokk]

Well all I can say is that if it was to limit ganking and not curtail some kind of BGS activity that they wanted to limit, it was done without any assessment of how ganking works.

While we're on the subject of crime and punishment - something else I have noticed with Odyssey as well is if can anyone tell me what the point fines are apart from being a worse punishment than bounties? It used to be that fines could be paid off regardless of notoriety because they were for lesser crimes. Now we have a situation where they lock you out of station services, require notoriety 0 to pay off and further than that, can't be expunged by handing yourself in.

Best don't fail any missions with cargo or things like power restoration missions.

From memory I think they actually stated that it was to deter ganking. It might have had some effect when introduced, but then they added fleet carriers which give gankers an effective work-around.

 

[Nephthys Vasudan]

Unless I'm missing something - the worst you'd have to deal with is waiting 20 hours or handing yourself in I guess (a max of 10 points)? not sure if your forced to sit in a jail cell.

Is it really that annoying considering the pros/cons of the system?

 

[oblivionmanman 2476]

im always notorious running base missions ill get what i want if ive got shoot the whole settlement lol, makes no odds to me,just move to a station im not wanted in, no brownie points lost,dont lose sleep over it.if you can leave game on overnight when you wake up should be clear .sit in the bar on your fc if the game doesnt crash it works. 07 you criminals lolol

 

[CMDR Xquizet]

IMHO, Notoriety should either, only be active while
A: ( In OPEN play and fighting against ACTUAL PLAYERS )
B: ( in Solo play, 10 minutes per point max, instead of 2 hours.)
THIS is a totally F***ED system that needs some MAJOR nerfs plain and simple.

 

[aRJay]

IMHO, Notoriety should either, only be active while
A: ( In OPEN play and fighting against ACTUAL PLAYERS )

Definitely not, the open only crowd would try to use it as a precedent.

B: ( 10 minutes per point max, instead of 2 hours.)
THIS is a totally F***ED system that needs some MAJOR nerfs plain and simple.

at ten minutes there is no point in having it. It is supposed to be a deterrent not something that easy to ignore.

 

[Nephthys Vasudan]

IMHO, Notoriety should either, only be active while
A: ( In OPEN play and fighting against ACTUAL PLAYERS )
B: ( 10 minutes per point max, instead of 2 hours.)
THIS is a totally F***ED system that needs some MAJOR nerfs plain and simple.

think you missed the point of notoriety if you think its pertaining to players.
Its pertaining to criminal activity - obviously - not sure why you think it should be limited to "open"

And as folks have pointed out.... you can keep doing your thing with points active regardless - not like its stopping you from playing.

 

[Schmack]

Unless I'm missing something - the worst you'd have to deal with is waiting 20 hours or handing yourself in I guess (a max of 10 points)? not sure if your forced to sit in a jail cell.

Is it really that annoying considering the pros/cons of the system?

That was my point, it's not game play to AFK overnight and wake up clean and clear vs someone who logs off with level 3 notoriety and starts the next day with level 3 notoriety. No you don't sit in a jail cell. You aren't restricted from playing other aspects, and base raiding and murder hoboing are alive and well (no pun intended) even with notoriety. So, like the imperial and federal ranking, when you get notoriety some missions should appear to protect some capital ship, deliver something, etc. As a side note, notoriety across the galaxy makes the game smaller. I like the concept of "get out of town until the heat cools" but not this Borg bubble idea where instantly everyone knows what you did on a remote planet.

im always notorious running base missions ill get what i want if ive got shoot the whole settlement lol, makes no odds to me,just move to a station im not wanted in, no brownie points lost,dont lose sleep over it.if you can leave game on overnight when you wake up should be clear .sit in the bar on your fc if the game doesnt crash it works. 07 you criminals lolol

I know it works. This is the point of the thread. There should be an in-game way to treat notoriety like a real thing instead of just a closed door that needs time to reset. Game aspects that encourage players to AFK should be rethought.

think you missed the point of notoriety if you think its pertaining to players.
Its pertaining to criminal activity - obviously - not sure why you think it should be limited to "open"

And as folks have pointed out.... you can keep doing your thing with points active regardless - not like its stopping you from playing.

You're actually saying notoriety doesn't do anything that matters. That's even more reason to work it into the mission system.

 

[Darrack]

O7

 

[Nephthys Vasudan]

You're actually saying notoriety doesn't do anything that matters. That's even more reason to work it into the mission system.

I didn't say it didn't do anything...I said it doesn't stop you from playing the game.

 

[Schmack]

I didn't say it didn't do anything...I said it doesn't stop you from playing the game.

You actually said "you can keep doing your thing with points active regardless - not like its stopping you from playing"

If it doesn't stop you from doing your thing, it doesn't punish you, ergo it doesn't do anything that matters.

 

[CMDR Xquizet]

Definitely not, the open only crowd would try to use it as a precedent.


at ten minutes there is no point in having it. It is supposed to be a deterrent not something that easy to ignore.

10 minutes per point for Solo play or not active at all on solo play, So if you accidentally shoot someone you did not mean to, You don't end up stuck for 2 hours waiting in a low-security station for the lame @** timer to count down so you can pay the stupid fine and continue playing. might as well uninstall and go play a better game, instead of waiting 2+ hours to pay some fine/bounty so you can keep playing....

 

[The Own of Noon]

Small time crooks

 

[Rat Catcher]

10 minutes per point for Solo play or not active at all on solo play, So if you accidentally shoot someone you did not mean to, You don't end up stuck for 2 hours waiting in a low-security station for the lame @** timer to count down so you can pay the stupid fine and continue playing. might as well uninstall and go play a better game, instead of waiting 2+ hours to pay some fine/bounty so you can keep playing....

May as well go play a better game then, surely?

If you need to spend 2 hours in a low-security station (I never have been bothered by notoriety) perhaps your gameplay is a little too focussed, rather than generalised?

(Disclaimer: I chose a life of crime in the game years ago)

 

[Jmanis]

Missions imo, aren't really the answer for "reducing notoriety".

Cold-dropping[1] this suggestion, but the commoditisation of Reputation is what's really needed. It could look like "Drop 1 full reputation rank" to the bottom of the previous rank, per notoriety point removed. So if i had notoriety 1, and removed a point, I'd go to the bottom of friendly. Anywhere in friendly, down to neutral, etc, but you can't drop from unfriendly to hostile (or maybe you could? "It's done, now never show your face here again").

Alternately, you can have a similar effect to clear up to 10k worth of bounties with a faction. That way, you keep notoriety, but are free to act with a faction that you were (likely accidentally) hostile to. You'd similarly cash superpower rep to clear interstellar bounties.

That would mean you could at-most get 3-4 levels of notoriety or 30-40k before you completely ruin your rep.

This also opens the gate for things like using rep to get materials, pre- engineered weapons (through the removed- from-odd- alpha station specialisations, or even the on foot contacts, which are grossly under used) and other things.

Some balance points and general changes towards this end:

- remove rep decay for the hostile state. Once you're hostile, that's it, you need to find a way to get back in the good books of that faction

- correct hostile superpower rep to lock you out of all stations belonging to that superpower. Right now it does nothing

- fix the bug where you can't pay fines when notorious. Is not how it's meant to work (undocumented change when Odyssey came in, so it's still in "bug or feature" land), and crimes which cause fines never result in notoriety, so makes no sense,

- incentivise staying wanted and/ or notorious... but distinguish between "discreet" crime (smuggling, covert activity where being caught and becoming wanted/ notorious is a problem): and lastly:

- make crime and general antagonism worth a damn. Right now the "crime and punishment" system is really just "and punishment". Success in a criminal career should have comparable reward patterns to success in a lawful career. It's simply no contest between the two... crime and antagonism doesn't pay jack.

Crime is inherently tied to negative states, and FD have always viewed negative states as "player failure", instead of "successful player antagonism". For a game with a background sim with equally as many positive as negative states, but functionally only ways to really induce the positive through sane action is pretty dumb.

[1] There's heaps more around the implementation and balancing of this that I could talk at-length about, but am avoiding most of that.