Reposting this from the official thread to here, because the other thread is not intended for user/user interaction. I'm curious as to peoples thoughts on this. Understand the post is a general concept, but I think it conveys the gist. Apologize about the length.
I have to echo some of the setiments by QuantumPion above (#1 at least). I think the goal needs to be to INCENTIVIZE interaction. I read so many of the comments, and they miss the mark. Lets take a step back:
This SHOULD NOT be about PUNISHING the criminal, it SHOULD be about BALANCING the encounter. Right? How does levying a higher fine, or higher rebuy cost, or whatever against the person committing the crime do? Does that make the victim feel better? No. If your successful, there is less crime. Is that what we want? No...we don't want to eliminate or even reduce these encounters, we want to make them more fun--Right? So, what are some meaningful ways we can actually BALANCE these situations, and make them more ENJOYABLE.
1) Per above : consider experimenting with eliminating the penalty of a lawful commander dying, allowing them to respawn without cost, with their cargo. Rational: see above. The murdered party still has consequences. They lost time (perhaps upwards of an hour game time in certain trade routes). Isn't that enough? As a trader, I have hid in solo for months, because I just couldn't risk it...That's not what we want, we want to ENCOURAGE interaction.
2) In leu of that (or in addition), the following should be an absolute given. Playing in OPEN should give you AT LEAST DOUBLE the reward for any given activity. I don't care if it's trade, pirating, bounty hunting, exploring. Whatever it is, you should be able to make AT LEAST DOUBLE. Why? Because you want, neigh, NEED to INCENTIVIZE people to come to open. Right now 75% or more of your players are hiding in solo / private. Why? They are SCARED. Scared of dying and having to rebuy their ship/losing their cargo. But if they could make twice as much in open, how many people do you think would flock to OPEN? Suddenly PvP would become a real thing. Alternatively, decrease the penalty for death by some measure in the OPEN game mode only.
3) SIGNIFICANTLY increase the reward for bounty hunters. Several legit activites can make you 5-50 million / hour. Make it so that a PvP bounty is a prize to be sought. While a a NPC bounty may be worth 50-200k, make a PvP bounty worth 5-10M. Rational: 1) PvP bounties are very hard to collect. Real players run when they lose shields, and can be neigh impossible to finish off--significantly more complicated than NPC. 2) This would cause players to flock to bounty hunting, which would itself cause such criminal activity to be much harder, and provide it's own punishment.
4) SIGNIFICANTLY BUFF the incentive to provide wing support / protection. Currently escorting a trader makes you what, 5% of their trade profit? So 2 players, that both invest the same amount of time into the game, and one makes 20x less? Like bounties in a wing, trade profits should be shared equally, or perhaps 85% vs 100% (To incentivize the trader, as if it was 1:1 everyone would want to be the escort ship (or maybe that's just me...). This would cause much more of the traders to have an escort, which would make pirating much more DIFFICULT. Again, this would BALANCE the encounter by FACILITATING player INTERACTION.
5) Add a dynamic reporting of criminals of some sort. Make it so that when a criminal commits a crime bounty hunters can begin to sniff him out. While a little complicated, consider this:
Criminal attacks lawful citizen.
Criminal is marked in the system for everyone to see for a brief period (like hearing a car alarm go off in real life. Everyone sort of looks in that direction for a bit)
Victims are marked on the map / station boards.
In addition to responding to the alert above, Bounty hunters can seek out victims. When they find the victims, they can "interview" them. In response to the "interview request" the victim can "Give information, Refuse information, maybe later". Give information: bounty hunter now gets a marker showing the criminals location (even in another star system). Refuse information: dead end lead. Bounty hunter must find a new lead. Victim marker erased "Maybe later". No information now, but victim remains labeled, and can decided to give information later.
6) When a bounty hunter or other player does find a criminal, They should be able to attach a tracer/tracker to the hull. This could only be removed by the criminal (or any player for that matter), by docking at a station and inspecting their ship. This would allow a bounty hunter to track down a criminal, discover their base of operations, etc. The bounty hunter may try to "throw off" the trail by going to a remote system away from "home" then inspecting his ship there, only to return "home" once safe. Likewise, a pirate might use a similar tracker to discover another players trade route, such that they can intercept them at a better point in their route. (If this is not desirable, it could be designed to only be attachable to wanted ships).
7) Criminals should be unable to jump to solo for a full 1-2 minutes after a crime / criminal engagement. Right now, if a player faces the law in the form of a diligent bounty hunter, they just log off to solo. Problem solved. The Criminal should feel like just that, a WANTED CRIMINAL. They should be unable to do this, and in combination with the above suggestions would leave a trail of bread crumbs a observant bounty hunter could follow. When they are being hunted by bounty hunters/cops, they should feel like prey. Jumping, hiding, employing tricks. Running into an astroid field to try to lose their pursuers like Han solo.
Using this, PLAYERS can become the punishment. They can seek out and bring criminals to justice. PLAYERS are incentivized to be in open, incentivized to escort and protect lawful citizens, incentivized to track down and bring criminals to justice, and the encounters and mechanics are BALANCED to allow them to do just that! (with criminals being rewarded HANSOMELY for taking on such risks). As with real life, the criminal lifestyle in ED should be the "darkside" as yoda says, "Easier, more sedductive". Criminals are criminals because they feel they can get rich quick. So provide the opportunity to get rich quick, but then give other players the tools to hunt them down for their short sightedness.
Just implimenting a few of these ideas would already necessitate pirating and other criminal activites to get a big buff in profits (we want to INCENTIVIZE Crime, (because without it we don't have targets), while at the same time we BUFF bounty hunting/Escorting! (which now balances the whole encounter).
This makes BOTH options more viable, more fun, and more interacting. THAT is the point, RIGHT? We are not trying to eliminate crime, or PUNISH PLAYERS, we are trying to balance the interactions. We introduce new and interesting gameplay, such that players can provide checks and balances to EACHOTHER. Creating a system that is based on the game dolling out punishment is not fun, it's dull. What Elite dangerous lacks is interesting player interactions and encounters. Use the need to balance crime as a way to introduce new and exciting GAME MECHANICS. How much more interesting would it be for bounty hunters to be detectives, tracking down their pray across systems, instead of mindless haz-rez robots? Please reconsider your approach to crime and punishment, focusing less on game-directed fines/penalties/restrictions and more on PLAYER-DIRECTED balancing.
I have to echo some of the setiments by QuantumPion above (#1 at least). I think the goal needs to be to INCENTIVIZE interaction. I read so many of the comments, and they miss the mark. Lets take a step back:
This SHOULD NOT be about PUNISHING the criminal, it SHOULD be about BALANCING the encounter. Right? How does levying a higher fine, or higher rebuy cost, or whatever against the person committing the crime do? Does that make the victim feel better? No. If your successful, there is less crime. Is that what we want? No...we don't want to eliminate or even reduce these encounters, we want to make them more fun--Right? So, what are some meaningful ways we can actually BALANCE these situations, and make them more ENJOYABLE.
1) Per above : consider experimenting with eliminating the penalty of a lawful commander dying, allowing them to respawn without cost, with their cargo. Rational: see above. The murdered party still has consequences. They lost time (perhaps upwards of an hour game time in certain trade routes). Isn't that enough? As a trader, I have hid in solo for months, because I just couldn't risk it...That's not what we want, we want to ENCOURAGE interaction.
2) In leu of that (or in addition), the following should be an absolute given. Playing in OPEN should give you AT LEAST DOUBLE the reward for any given activity. I don't care if it's trade, pirating, bounty hunting, exploring. Whatever it is, you should be able to make AT LEAST DOUBLE. Why? Because you want, neigh, NEED to INCENTIVIZE people to come to open. Right now 75% or more of your players are hiding in solo / private. Why? They are SCARED. Scared of dying and having to rebuy their ship/losing their cargo. But if they could make twice as much in open, how many people do you think would flock to OPEN? Suddenly PvP would become a real thing. Alternatively, decrease the penalty for death by some measure in the OPEN game mode only.
3) SIGNIFICANTLY increase the reward for bounty hunters. Several legit activites can make you 5-50 million / hour. Make it so that a PvP bounty is a prize to be sought. While a a NPC bounty may be worth 50-200k, make a PvP bounty worth 5-10M. Rational: 1) PvP bounties are very hard to collect. Real players run when they lose shields, and can be neigh impossible to finish off--significantly more complicated than NPC. 2) This would cause players to flock to bounty hunting, which would itself cause such criminal activity to be much harder, and provide it's own punishment.
4) SIGNIFICANTLY BUFF the incentive to provide wing support / protection. Currently escorting a trader makes you what, 5% of their trade profit? So 2 players, that both invest the same amount of time into the game, and one makes 20x less? Like bounties in a wing, trade profits should be shared equally, or perhaps 85% vs 100% (To incentivize the trader, as if it was 1:1 everyone would want to be the escort ship (or maybe that's just me...). This would cause much more of the traders to have an escort, which would make pirating much more DIFFICULT. Again, this would BALANCE the encounter by FACILITATING player INTERACTION.
5) Add a dynamic reporting of criminals of some sort. Make it so that when a criminal commits a crime bounty hunters can begin to sniff him out. While a little complicated, consider this:
Criminal attacks lawful citizen.
Criminal is marked in the system for everyone to see for a brief period (like hearing a car alarm go off in real life. Everyone sort of looks in that direction for a bit)
Victims are marked on the map / station boards.
In addition to responding to the alert above, Bounty hunters can seek out victims. When they find the victims, they can "interview" them. In response to the "interview request" the victim can "Give information, Refuse information, maybe later". Give information: bounty hunter now gets a marker showing the criminals location (even in another star system). Refuse information: dead end lead. Bounty hunter must find a new lead. Victim marker erased "Maybe later". No information now, but victim remains labeled, and can decided to give information later.
6) When a bounty hunter or other player does find a criminal, They should be able to attach a tracer/tracker to the hull. This could only be removed by the criminal (or any player for that matter), by docking at a station and inspecting their ship. This would allow a bounty hunter to track down a criminal, discover their base of operations, etc. The bounty hunter may try to "throw off" the trail by going to a remote system away from "home" then inspecting his ship there, only to return "home" once safe. Likewise, a pirate might use a similar tracker to discover another players trade route, such that they can intercept them at a better point in their route. (If this is not desirable, it could be designed to only be attachable to wanted ships).
7) Criminals should be unable to jump to solo for a full 1-2 minutes after a crime / criminal engagement. Right now, if a player faces the law in the form of a diligent bounty hunter, they just log off to solo. Problem solved. The Criminal should feel like just that, a WANTED CRIMINAL. They should be unable to do this, and in combination with the above suggestions would leave a trail of bread crumbs a observant bounty hunter could follow. When they are being hunted by bounty hunters/cops, they should feel like prey. Jumping, hiding, employing tricks. Running into an astroid field to try to lose their pursuers like Han solo.
Using this, PLAYERS can become the punishment. They can seek out and bring criminals to justice. PLAYERS are incentivized to be in open, incentivized to escort and protect lawful citizens, incentivized to track down and bring criminals to justice, and the encounters and mechanics are BALANCED to allow them to do just that! (with criminals being rewarded HANSOMELY for taking on such risks). As with real life, the criminal lifestyle in ED should be the "darkside" as yoda says, "Easier, more sedductive". Criminals are criminals because they feel they can get rich quick. So provide the opportunity to get rich quick, but then give other players the tools to hunt them down for their short sightedness.
Just implimenting a few of these ideas would already necessitate pirating and other criminal activites to get a big buff in profits (we want to INCENTIVIZE Crime, (because without it we don't have targets), while at the same time we BUFF bounty hunting/Escorting! (which now balances the whole encounter).
This makes BOTH options more viable, more fun, and more interacting. THAT is the point, RIGHT? We are not trying to eliminate crime, or PUNISH PLAYERS, we are trying to balance the interactions. We introduce new and interesting gameplay, such that players can provide checks and balances to EACHOTHER. Creating a system that is based on the game dolling out punishment is not fun, it's dull. What Elite dangerous lacks is interesting player interactions and encounters. Use the need to balance crime as a way to introduce new and exciting GAME MECHANICS. How much more interesting would it be for bounty hunters to be detectives, tracking down their pray across systems, instead of mindless haz-rez robots? Please reconsider your approach to crime and punishment, focusing less on game-directed fines/penalties/restrictions and more on PLAYER-DIRECTED balancing.