General Notoriety mechanic in the climate crisis

[HappyMoonMonkey]

Everything in this thread encourages me to be notorious for longer. Notoriety 10 for longer saves the environment. Save the environment and gank If you're going AFK to preserve your BGS reputation then you're killing polar bears. Save the environment and embrace the psychopath within you.

 

[Brrokk]

Proposal - make notoriety have a greater impact: Timer is paused while you are docked. In-game reason: They are still on your heels, especially so while you are within the heart of civilization: At a port.

I think the solution is that way. Make notoriety decay only when control inputs occur, then it would actually have a consequence in gameplay. Of course there would be programs to simulate control inputs, but those would only be used by a minority who like technical challenges.

 

[Galactic Fork]

I like to imagine something like a notorious mission board - higher notoriety having an impact like reputation does on the rewards Same goes for the team missions. Technically if you're law-abiding and not looking for team missions a big part of the mission board is just junk.

On that note, I've always wanted a secondary "Dark web" location services screen/terminal for illegal stuff. Seems odd logging into the station's terminal and seeing missions to commit crimes. Maybe not in anarchy systems, but you get the point. Maybe have way to switch from a law abiding location services to a glitchy off color version with less legitimate menu items. The Mission board is all the criminal mission list. Passenger lounge has the criminals looking to be transported, or requests to move hostages, and the group transport has the option to take to slavers as a notation. The commodities market is the black market. There could be illegal optional modules (like prisoner cabins).
This way, more lucrative criminal activities could require both Notoriety and reputation, or better yet, notoriety could supersede some of the reputation needed if high enough.

 

[Jmanis]

On that note, I've always wanted a secondary "Dark web" location services screen/terminal for illegal stuff. Seems odd logging into the station's terminal and seeing missions to commit crimes. Maybe not in anarchy systems, but you get the point. Maybe have way to switch from a law abiding location services to a glitchy off color version with less legitimate menu items. The Mission board is all the criminal mission list. Passenger lounge has the criminals looking to be transported, or requests to move hostages, and the group transport has the option to take to slavers as a notation. The commodities market is the black market. There could be illegal optional modules (like prisoner cabins).
This way, more lucrative criminal activities could require both Notoriety and reputation, or better yet, notoriety could supersede some of the reputation needed if high enough.

Exactly this.

Where positive rep with a faction normally results in a benefit working for that faction, on the criminal mission board, missions should target the local factions instead of support (and are offered by anonymous contacts), and the worse your reputation with that faction is, the better your reward... because who cares if Joe Bloggs commits a crime, but the Scourge of <faction name here>, that puts the fear of gods in there.... and notoriety means you're known for your deeds.

 

[AtomicJuggler]

...

The online requirement is indeed terrible for the environment and energy bills. Players simply leave their machines running while at sleep/work. A good compromise for Frontier could be removing the online requirement but doubling from 2 to 4 hours each notoriety point decay.

...

To be fair, irresponsibly leaving a machine running to get rid of notoriety is a player problem, not fdev... the player could simply go somewhere else (like exploring, mining etc) for a while) and continue to play normally. no need to leave the computer on.
On the same note, I think that IF offline notoriety decay was an option, then 1 point decay per WEEK would be more acceptable.
We are not playing a space GTA.

 

[Jack Winter]

IMO, if one ranks up notoriety then live with it.. Leaving the game logged in to burn it off seems more than silly.

 

[Old Duck]

The way notoriety decays currently needs to change. A game mechanic that encourages players to AFK, with a device consuming energy to provide no purpose or enjoyment is just plain wrong and wasteful.

Playing Odyssey instead of Horizons is also a wrong and wasteful consumption of energy, especially if you're using an air conditioner to remove all the extra heat that Odyssey generates

 

[Morbad]

While notoriety reduction via gameplay would be ideal, I think the onus is on the player to take steps to reduce the power consumption of their setups, if they choose (and it is a choice) to leave the game running just to burn off notoriety.

A half dozen clicks--to load less aggressive power profiles and cap frame rate--cuts my gaming system's power consumption at the wall from ~400w to ~60w, while the game is running and if I was going to leave the game idle for any length of time, I'd load it up on one of my laptops, where it would only take ~20w.

Playing Odyssey instead of Horizons is also a wrong and wasteful consumption of energy, especially if you're using an air conditioner to remove all the extra heat that Odyssey generates

Uncapped, Horizons uses slightly more wattage on most of my systems than Odyssey. At any given, fixed, frame rate, Odyssey is more power hungry, but Horizons generally runs so much faster that it more than compensates.

 

[Chaparral]

The OP has an interesting take on the game mechanic. Notoriety DOES encourage AFK log in.

AFK log in DOES use energy unnecessarily.

I like Morbad's solution. Remove Notoriety decay completely.

You kill someone that is not wanted, participating in a war, a PP rival, or in an anarchy system - you are notorious.

The consequences are isolation from civilized society.

This would hugely improve circumstances in places like Deciat, make pirates truly terrifying and make in game choices have meaning.

To make things fair, there should be pirate engineers in out of the way places - true Mos Eisley ports.

This is an opportunity to make a huge positive change in C&P - don't squander it FDEV.

 

[Danieros]

To be fair, irresponsibly leaving a machine running to get rid of notoriety is a player problem, not fdev... the player could simply go somewhere else (like exploring, mining etc) for a while) and continue to play normally. no need to leave the computer on.
On the same note, I think that IF offline notoriety decay was an option, then 1 point decay per WEEK would be more acceptable.
We are not playing a space GTA.

This is like all the relogski farming. If designers leave a hole like this, players will use them. Even if it is bad for the environment/bills, or bad for the player's own enjoyment (playing the game normally and getting materials while doing it vs spending days of relogging at the same location/method and then burning out from doing such boring repetition). But ultimately they can fix these holes, not the players' behaviors (unless it breaks ToS, of course).

If they go for once per week, I think that's too extreme. At that point they should just completely change it from hours of game/idle time into quantity/quality of law-abiding actions performed to achieve what you mean, and what may have been the original intent. But if it is not well-balanced, it might force players into the meta of whatever might be the most efficient way, that not being the activity they find fun. At least right now you won't have players burning out from leaving their game running in the background.

They also need to fix some bugs if they go for such extreme notoriety duration. For example, in powerplay there is a very rare bug in which you're killing enemy pledged NPC ships and yet you do end up getting notoriety as if you were unpledged or killing non-pledged clean ships. This persists until you notice why the heck there is an ATR warning/shooting at me, or you relog.

 

[Old Duck]

Uncapped, Horizons uses slightly more wattage on most of my systems than Odyssey. At any given, fixed, frame rate, Odyssey is more power hungry, but Horizons generally runs so much faster that it more than compensates.

You people and your "uncapped". I always run with vysnc on, ALWAYS. Why would I waste electricity running at a higher framerate than my monitor can display? The only time I was tempted to uncap my framerate was when the FSS was directly tied to framerate for whatever stupid reason. Technically it still is IIRC, but it doesn't matter now since Frontier added the estimate to POIs on planet surfaces.

Not only do I run vysnced, I also "throttle down" my display from 144hz to 60hz because I just don't notice a major difference in the games I play. Now if I was playing Overwatch on my laptop, then I might play at 144 fps, but for the games I play at the resolution and monitor size I play on, 60 fps is my sweet spot.

 

[Tiramu]

Wow, you win the spurious arguments internet award.

Hardly, asking developers to be mindful of how their mechanics encourage player behaviours that are harmful to the environment is perfectly reasonable.


While its an MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV has a rested state.

Basically, if you spend time in a sanctuary (safe zone) you become rested. You get an EXP bonud while rested, but that rested bonus is supposedly greater if you logout of the game instead of AFK'ing.

When the game explains rested status it encourages you to sign out in a Sanctuary.


Overall, it encourages players to moderate their play time and not to AFK.

 

[Galactic Fork]

OK, I'm a bit confused by the overall premise of this thread. How does notoriety only decaying during play encourage AFKing? Are the only things you do ones that raise notoriety? Can't you just go to an Anarchy system and murder criminals without raising notoriety? I'd say rather than "encouraging AFK" it encourages you think more about your actions and maybe better manage your criminal behavior. Or you know, hang out more in lawless areas since that's more your playstyle.

 

[Morbad]

You people and your "uncapped". I always run with vysnc on, ALWAYS. Why would I waste electricity running at a higher framerate than my monitor can display? The only time I was tempted to uncap my framerate was when the FSS was directly tied to framerate for whatever stupid reason. Technically it still is IIRC, but it doesn't matter now since Frontier added the estimate to POIs on planet surfaces.

Not only do I run vysnced, I also "throttle down" my display from 144hz to 60hz because I just don't notice a major difference in the games I play. Now if I was playing Overwatch on my laptop, then I might play at 144 fps, but for the games I play at the resolution and monitor size I play on, 60 fps is my sweet spot.

The main reason to run without any form of syncing is for latency and frame consistency reasons. With vsync enabled a frame has to be displayed for integer multiples of the refresh rate which means there will be a stutter any and every time frame rate crosses an integer fraction of the display's refresh rate. These stutters are more perceptible as frame rate falls. At 60Hz each frame is 16.67ms and dipping below 60 fps, even for a moment, results in a 33.33ms frame, which is a clearly perceptible stutter, to me. Dips at borderline frame rates can be mitigated by keeping the render queue full and making that queue deeper, but this dramatically increases latency and there are plenty of situations in this game, even outside of fast action scenes (like racing/driving/hooning or fighting something challenging), where latency is already obtrusive. Looking around with headlook is a good example...it's very floaty unless frame rate is very high.

VRR mitigates some of this, but few LCDs have a true one-size-fits-all overdrive setting that is applicable across the entire VRR range, and it's still slightly more latency than running without synchronization.

In my case, the refresh rate of my main panel is high enough that the main reason to enable vsync or VRR doesn't really apply...I don't see any perceptible tearing at 240Hz, no matter the frame rate of the content. So, I run vsync and VRR off, using the overdrive setting most suited for 240Hz. It's the lowest possible latency and best possible pixel transitions/least ghosting. The only downside is that, if I'm not CPU or memory subsystem limited, my GPU is pegged at a very high load, but since the system can handle this, without getting too loud, and I pay less than eleven cents a kWH for the hydroelectric power in this area, that's rarely a concern for me.

If one doesn't notice any downsides from enabling vsync and/or capping frame rate, then there is no reason not to do so, but I often do notice issues.

 

[Old Duck]

The main reason to run without any form of syncing is for latency and frame consistency reasons. With vsync enabled a frame has to be displayed for integer multiples of the refresh rate which means there will be a stutter any and every time frame rate crosses an integer fraction of the display's refresh rate. These stutters are more perceptible as frame rate falls. At 60Hz each frame is 16.67ms and dipping below 60 fps, even for a moment, results in a 33.33ms frame, which is a clearly perceptible stutter, to me.

The only game I have that suffers from this is MSFS, so I framerate lock it to 30fps vysnced, and it looks really good, thanks to a very nice motion blur algorithm. All my other games have lots of headroom, so this just doesn't happen except in the rarest of occasions (super-busy city in ESO, for example). Thanks to that headroom, my laptop runs a lot cooler and quieter when I'm not pushing the GPU right up to the limit.

Disclaimer - my laptop has a 1080p display, so I'm not pushing that many pixels. I do sometimes plug into a 4K TV, and pushing 4K does result in the stuttering you talk about, so I usually dial it back to 1440p, which my TV does an amazing job at upscaling, and I can usually maintain 60fps without stutter or latency.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

OK, I'm a bit confused by the overall premise of this thread. How does notoriety only decaying during play encourage AFKing? Are the only things you do ones that raise notoriety? Can't you just go to an Anarchy system and murder criminals without raising notoriety? I'd say rather than "encouraging AFK" it encourages you think more about your actions and maybe better manage your criminal behavior. Or you know, hang out more in lawless areas since that's more your playstyle.

TBH when I'm on a spree I'll just live with it. Since fleet carriers and factions that control stations you haven't got a bounty with still let you do what you need to do there it's no real problem. Some people will go to any lengths to avoid having consequences to deal with though. Although for others there is an element of fun knowing they've found a way to sidestep the devs on something.

 

[Dragsham]

I've been 10 alot over the years. Sprees aside it's too easy to just go mine or run missions all the while notorious and have no tangible downsides except the occasional jump by miffed local law enforcement. But even that's rare if your moving around alot. Stay out of wanted systems and all Is good...too easy.
Afk@ is frankly stupid. Or just plain unable to game otherwise outside of whatever it is they do to get notorious.
Knowing how it all works and getting around it is key.
Too Make it either almost permanent ie mission running or hauling for the peeved faction to lower it, not a ticking clock.
As it stands gankers move freely apart from where they hunt. Even there they camp on moons orbits till someone comes along, avoiding feds interdictions, though even that isn't 100%.
Too easy for them.
Make it pay!!

 

[Morbad]

The only game I have that suffers from this is MSFS, so I framerate lock it to 30fps vysnced, and it looks really good, thanks to a very nice motion blur algorithm. All my other games have lots of headroom, so this just doesn't happen except in the rarest of occasions (super-busy city in ESO, for example). Thanks to that headroom, my laptop runs a lot cooler and quieter when I'm not pushing the GPU right up to the limit.

Disclaimer - my laptop has a 1080p display, so I'm not pushing that many pixels. I do sometimes plug into a 4K TV, and pushing 4K does result in the stuttering you talk about, so I usually dial it back to 1440p, which my TV does an amazing job at upscaling, and I can usually maintain 60fps without stutter or latency.

One of the main reasons I have a high refresh rate display with pixel transition times that can do justice to it is to avoid blur. I like to be able to make out details, even during high motion scenes. Blur can certainly make lower frame rates appear smoother, but I'd rather have smoothness and motion clarity via higher frame rates, wherever practical.

 

[Jmanis]

OK, I'm a bit confused by the overall premise of this thread. How does notoriety only decaying during play encourage AFKing? Are the only things you do ones that raise notoriety? Can't you just go to an Anarchy system and murder criminals without raising notoriety? I'd say rather than "encouraging AFK" it encourages you think more about your actions and maybe better manage your criminal behavior. Or you know, hang out more in lawless areas since that's more your playstyle.

For me, the main issue is the lack of separation of notoriety between superpowers.

Look at the way the old Frontier: Elite 2 and FFE worked. You go to Federal and Independent systems and run riot, accruing massive fines. You're no longer welcome in their ports either until you pay them off. That's fine, because I hang out in Imperial systems for my run of the mill activities, and take a host of missions from the Empire to take down targets in Federal and Independent systems.

But occasionally I get a misdemeanour, forgot to request clearance when leaving, blocked a landing pad, accidentally docked at Achenar carrying leftover Radioactives from my military fuel. I get a fine, but I can still pay it off and continue life with the Empire, while continuing to shun and play havoc to the Federal and Independent systems.

But in ED, I can't do that. Rack up Notoriety 10 blatting a bunch of security forces in Federal space, go back to Imperial territory, clip the wing of an overly-ambitious NPC flying through the toaster, boom, waiting for Notoriety 10 to wash, just to pay a simple 150cr fine.

I'm not looking to go back to Federal, Independent or Alliance space. I want to be wanted and notorious in those systems due to focusing around play as a staunch Imperialist. But I can't do that at all, because the consequence of dealing with a minor transgression in Empire space gets lumped in with that activity. It doesn't help that Interstellar bounties are bugged as well, but that's not an always-problem at least.

EDIT: I know there's also the concept of "Well just don't get a fine in the Empire!"... but we all know that stuff just goes wrong time to time.

 

[Dragsham]

Yeah one should be able to pay off fines if say, the controlling faction or otherwise is affiliated with that cmdr. Would make sense.