Notoriety vs Mission Timers - Wrong way round

[5AnaHalfHatsize]

With the new notoriety system in 3.0 FD broke a long standing taboo, they put a timer in the game that counted down in "in-game" time, not real time.

But whats the point of the notoriety system? Surely to stop cashed-up griefers just instantly wiping their wanted status and carrying on regardless.

Does that really need to be enforced in game time? All it does is force them into another ship for a while, then when they finish playing they'll just leave the game logged in at a station and the notoriety will be gone when they get back... exactly the same as if it was in real time except that their PCs have had to emit a couple of tonnes of carbon equivalent drawing the station interior in the mean time.

Then there's mission timers - forced to be real time which is a total PITA if you only have a limited time to play each day as it means a lot of the mission types - I'm looking at you massacre missions - just can't be done in - say - an hours game time even if you supposedly have 23 hours to do them.

An old gripe I know - and the refrain in that case is always "but won't somebody think of the BGS". Except, from the same faction, in the same state, you get one state-related massacre mission that you MUST complete in 23 hours, yet right next to it is a "Civil War scan mission" that you get a week to do!

And if the fear is that we will get BGS imbalance, then just don't let the mission outcome affect the BGS if the faction state changed between when you took the mission and completed it.

I really think these should be swapped around, notoriety to tick down in real time and mission timers to tick down in "in-game" time.

Or at least now that FD have broken through their own restraints in this, I just don't think there's any good excuse for not making the change for mission timers.

 

[Shiro Akai]

First, afaik notoriety does not count down when you're docked. You must be outside the station. So when they take another ship, the hot one will have it's notoriety timer frozen and when they come back to that ship it will still suffer notoriety penalty. Can't "wait off" while using other ship. Plus changing hot ships isn't that easy - anonymous access prevents you from stations facilities, like shipyard - you're locked in your hot one.

Surely, you can stop outside the station and allow the timer to go off. But you are stranded in hot ship and forced into inactivity. Can't go and change ship because of crime and locked access. You can't continue due to notoriety. You can go elsewhere, where you are not wanted but it makes you travel instead of griefing - literally breaking your actions.

You can leave your ship stranded outside the station and wait the timer off. But it keeps you from the game nonetheless. If you need to wait for notoriety to go away you don't play and cannot cause harm. You are removed for the time being. And possible return of notoriety can make you think twice before taking certain actions that carry notoriety risk with it.

I think it works as intended but I haven't dig into the subject much so I can be bit wrong with few things.

 

[Brrokk]

I think Notoriety should tick down in game time; it's a game penalty.

And so should mission timers.

 

[5AnaHalfHatsize]

First, afaik notoriety does not count down when you're docked. You must be outside the station. So when they take another ship, the hot one will have it's notoriety timer frozen and when they come back to that ship it will still suffer notoriety penalty. Can't "wait off" while using other ship. Plus changing hot ships isn't that easy - anonymous access prevents you from stations facilities, like shipyard - you're locked in your hot one.

Surely, you can stop outside the station and allow the timer to go off. But you are stranded in hot ship and forced into inactivity. Can't go and change ship because of crime and locked access. You can't continue due to notoriety. You can go elsewhere, where you are not wanted but it makes you travel instead of griefing - literally breaking your actions.

You can leave your ship stranded outside the station and wait the timer off. But it keeps you from the game nonetheless. If you need to wait for notoriety to go away you don't play and cannot cause harm. You are removed for the time being. And possible return of notoriety can make you think twice before taking certain actions that carry notoriety risk with it.

I think it works as intended but I haven't dig into the subject much so I can be bit wrong with few things.

OK, didn't know the first bit about stations, but that doesn't stop you just flying into deep space in the hot ship and hanging about in solo while you sleep.

And you can always get to another jurisdiction pretty easily - there's plenty of independent systems within a couple of jumps even if you're in the heart of empire or fed space to switch ships

Edit:

• Notoriety is linked directly to the Commander, regardless of which ship they fly in.

So yeah, you can just jump into another ship and let it tick down.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I saw some comments about punishment and reward one day.
Some MMO devs wanted to disencourage super long playing binges and introduced a mechanic that capped XP gain after an amount of time in the game. Many players didn't like that and felt punished for playing the game. Doesn't really make sense to punisjh someone for playing.

So they turned the whole thing around. For every hour offline they would accrue XP bonus that would gradually be spent when playing. In order to enjoy the bonus players had to be offline a reasonable amount of time. Players had no problem with this, it's more like a reward, after all.

ED design philosphy is mostly the first way. Penalize.

 

[Pendergast]

First, afaik notoriety does not count down when you're docked. You must be outside the station. So when they take another ship, the hot one will have it's notoriety timer frozen and when they come back to that ship it will still suffer notoriety penalty. Can't "wait off" while using other ship. Plus changing hot ships isn't that easy - anonymous access prevents you from stations facilities, like shipyard - you're locked in your hot one.

Surely, you can stop outside the station and allow the timer to go off. But you are stranded in hot ship and forced into inactivity. Can't go and change ship because of crime and locked access. You can't continue due to notoriety. You can go elsewhere, where you are not wanted but it makes you travel instead of griefing - literally breaking your actions.

You can leave your ship stranded outside the station and wait the timer off. But it keeps you from the game nonetheless. If you need to wait for notoriety to go away you don't play and cannot cause harm. You are removed for the time being. And possible return of notoriety can make you think twice before taking certain actions that carry notoriety risk with it.

I think it works as intended but I haven't dig into the subject much so I can be bit wrong with few things.

You can change ships anywhere you are not wanted so really I can't see it being any deterrent at all. Should be locked to your ship until the notoriety is gone.

 

[Acceleratio]

I saw some comments about punishment and reward one day.
Some MMO devs wanted to disencourage super long playing binges and introduced a mechanic that capped XP gain after an amount of time in the game. Many players didn't like that and felt punished for playing the game. Doesn't really make sense to punisjh someone for playing.

So they turned the whole thing around. For every hour offline they would accrue XP bonus that would gradually be spent when playing. In order to enjoy the bonus players had to be offline a reasonable amount of time. Players had no problem with this, it's more like a reward, after all.

ED design philosphy is mostly the first way. Penalize.

Yeah that's becoming a pretty common theme in the game. “Punishment”, “Consequences” ... etc. Note that I am not against consequences in games but I think sometimes when I play this game it feels like it has an identity crisis. Some parts feel like a hardcore simulator while others feel super gamey.

Mission times in game time would be a huge + though. I try not to murder innocents in the game as good as I can so I can't speak for notoriety.


Still I think we should all remember that this is a GAME in the first place and a game is supposed to be fun and not punishing. Now what exactly fun is, that's a totally different side of the whole discussion. For me the whole SC mechanic feels very time wasting and unfun. The more stuff I have to do in SC (searching for signals, having to visit stations just to pay of a fine/bounty, the less I enjoy the game.

Others might feel different about this. I wonder how the rest of the community sees this mission time issue.

 

[Metacon]

But whats the point of the notoriety system?

What would be the point of your suggestion when a player would be able to commit a mass murder spree.. and when he hits notoriety of 10 he then just calls it a day.. loggs off... and starts with a clean balance in the next morning? This would entirely MISS the point of the C&P changes.

But on the other hand.. I would not care wether notoriety counted down ingame or in realtime.. as long as for e.g. every 2 hours of "ingame-time-notoriety" you would have to endure 24 hours of "realtime-notoriety"... So "waiting it out" from notoriety 10 to 0 would cost you 10 realtime days. I hardly doubt you'd prefer that more.

Doesn't really make sense to punisjh someone for playing.
ED design philosphy is mostly the first way. Penalize.

You remember we're talking about player who actually chose to be playing as criminals in ED?
They are not punished - ED helps them to get the roleplaying experience they are actually looking for.

IMERSHUN FTW!

Youre playing a hobo mass murderer? You get to be on the interstellars police "most wanted" list... if that's what floats your boat - ok.
You dont want to be on the list? Dont murder then.No easy way out being "mass hobo murder tonight / do a logoffsky / and you're off the most wanted list tomorrow" (this feature is called "persistent universe")

There's a reason why its called "crime and punishment".. because calling it "crime and gratification" isnt what most real countries enforce on criminals.. and it would send a very wrong message to criminals

ED's C&P system is modelled after real world C&P systems.. were caught criminals have to face consequences..
I know of no real world government that rewards good citizens for every day that they dont commit a crime... while ignoring the criminals altoghether. Although that would be a funny idea.

 

[5AnaHalfHatsize]

What would be the point of your suggestion when a player would be able to commit a mass murder spree.. and when he hits notoriety of 10 he then just calls it a day.. loggs off... and starts with a clean balance in the next morning? This would entirely MISS the point of the C&P changes.

Except they can do that RIGHT NOW, only difference being instead of logging off they swap into their stock sidewinder and fly off to a couple of Kls from the main star, low wake and just fly unattended for a few hours.

And I'm still not 100% that you can't just sit in a station and wait it out - has anyone got a link to show if that's true or not?

Either way, being logged into the game or not to count it down makes no difference, so I really don't see the point in forcing people to be logged in.

And anyway, it's the MISSION TIMERS I'm more interested in, *why* do they have to be real time? Changing those to in game timers would make a huge positive difference to how a lot of people play the game IMHO.

 

[SpaceScania]

Yeah I have participated on many threads pleading with Frontier to consider suspending timers so that those of us who are very busy IRL can play the game without fear if we have to stop abruptly for some reason.

I think as a society we need to have a conversation about building games in a responsible way that encourages balance. I shouldn’t feel anxiety about in-game fines and loss of REP on failed missions if I have to log out and take care of something else. I don’t know how many times RNG has given me a good mission after a night of fruitless searching 10 minutes before I log out. I can’t take the good mission because it will be a while before my next session.

Frontier could make a few changes, and a big one being mission timers, that would go a long way towards making Elite more friendly to gamers on tight schedules. This would also encourage players to be balanced.

Again, if we could have a focused feedback session on missions this would be one of the feature requests that I would be very interested in seeing the community discuss.