PVP/Crime Consequences required levels (Answers from PVE players please.)

[racer1]

I'm mostly a smuggler/trader/explorer and I want player piracy to be viable.

Remove suicidey - Killing player means you stay wanted for 7 days in all systems in the galaxy with a security presence (non anarchy). Maybe there would have to be some limitations on wanted scope for PP/aligned players. The wanted level should stay even if killed by another player otherwise people will just get their friends to kill them for the bounty, large bounties probably don't make sense for the same reason. Security should be very aggressive if they spot you. The security response to interdictions could up upped a little, but not too much.

NPC traders should be made more viable for pirates. Make them submit and drop some cargo more valuable than biowaste.

Edit: And make smaller ship disableable without destroying them without making module sniping too easy

 

[Majinvash]

Taking from the replies so far.

Stations

Being blocked from landing local stations, should be a given. And it should be applied to the relevant Alliance, Fed and Empire spaces.
To be wanted in Empire System 1 and a pillar of the community in next door Empire System 2, is crazy.

But would need to be balanced off by safe areas. For the criminal element to reside and store their booty/ships.

The stations doesn’t need to scan you to know if you are a criminal, it already knows your related reputation as it gives you a different greetings.

Currently only if the local police finish a scan on you, does the station react by a basic refusal to land.
I mean it will destroy you for landing in the wrong pad but just say “no go away” if you are wearing a 1million+ bounty for murder.

It would possibly depend on lore and who owns the station vs the current controlling power, as you may not be wanted by all controlling factions.

For balance, there should be a way to get into stations if you are wanted but it should be super risky. Like a silent running, forced dock, grab resources and boost getaway, smirking with glee. But in if you fail, the station gets angry and shoots at you. POP

Insurance premiums

Without breaking the game for everyone, ( Crime is crime ) I don’t think putting the insurance pay outs up will make a slight bit of difference.
Its already near impossible to be killed in ED if you know what you are doing. I could jump into Eravate, pop Sidewiders with impunity and when AA show up with their defence fleet, there is almost zero chance they could take me out before I could escape.

The way to make this plausible would be to make it harder to escape any situation but the moment I mention masslocking ships trying to highwake, everyone loses their minds. But it’s the only way to give a Bounty Hunter a real chance of killing a Player Criminal in a ship that can withstand more than 30 seconds of fire. ( FYI Most ships can do that with ease )

It’s also very easy to become a criminal without even seeing another player, so large premiums for wanted players would effect a lot more than just a PVP player.

Risk / Reward with Trading

This is a huge way to make the system security levels make sense but would be a HUGE amount of other mechanism and content needed to make it work.

Police Response

This is totally linked to Risk / Reward trading.
A secure system, should be low pay out because it would need to pay for its increased security.
If I decide to Pirate in Cemiese, which is my current location of choice. I should feel under threat from local NPC’s, I don’t because they are a joke in terms of challenge to a PVP player.
But I don’t think having almost instant spawning police, even ones who aren’t totally inept is going to stop players in weak ships getting killed by a PVP player. It’s so quick and escaping 8 Police Cutters/FDLs/Vultures, is a cake walk because of High Waking.

Bounties

A players bounty should be linked to the player and not the ship they are flying, and should be major power wide.
How is would be actioned in the game, I do not know without making a new insurance mechanism.
The bounties also need to be worth (exploitable) a bounty hunter risking his ship rebuy, being wanted if he chases a criminal into controlled space where the criminal isn’t wanted and then in turn potentially making him a wanted player killer.
IE A 13^th Legion Empire player is hunting down a Federal player who has jumped into their space, follows them back into Federal space.
K-Scans, get the kill. He is now a Player killer in Federal space. Should he have a huge insurance rebuy? I mean he’s a good guy ( from a certain point of view )

But I am more interested in not only the mechanism you guys want but the levels you think they would need to be at.
How big should a players rebuy in a 150million FDL be when he kills a player Cutter?
How long should bounties last? (crime is crime)
Different types of crime and if so how does the insurance engine know this?
Should a smuggler who gets scanned with 100tonnes of slaves, also have to pay back the same PVP killer insurance rate?

Keep em coming

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Chrystoph]

The reason this is interesting to me, is that being a Pirate, we need victims. Sorry but this cannot phrased any other way.
Also shocking to many, we do not shy away from challenge.

See, this is the problem. There is NO reward for being a "victim" that is commiserate with being destroyed. Demanding that people play in Open so you can exploit them is about as sensible as demanding that someone step in front of a bus.

The current system literally punishes the victim for being a victim. Given the pirate mindset of overwhelming force, this means that the newer players are far more likely to be targets.

Unless you can make an immunity, probably bases on Assets, the people most likely to be attacked are the ones that the community should be most interested in sheltering. I exempt the obvious exceptions, such as Conflict Zones, attacking other players, etc.

All of that said, my suggestion for luring players into Open to be prey would be a 1/4 to 1/3 increase in legal Trade revenue. That way, they have an incentive to risk something other than NPC pirates.

 

[Majinvash]

See, this is the problem. There is NO reward for being a "victim" that is commiserate with being destroyed. Demanding that people play in Open so you can exploit them is about as sensible as demanding that someone step in front of a bus.

The current system literally punishes the victim for being a victim. Given the pirate mindset of overwhelming force, this means that the newer players are far more likely to be targets.

Unless you can make an immunity, probably bases on Assets, the people most likely to be attacked are the ones that the community should be most interested in sheltering. I exempt the obvious exceptions, such as Conflict Zones, attacking other players, etc.

All of that said, my suggestion for luring players into Open to be prey would be a 1/4 to 1/3 increase in legal Trade revenue. That way, they have an incentive to risk something other than NPC pirates.

Oh I totally agree with you.

The excitement of being pirated is in its self a reward.
The Code despite all the bile and salt thrown in our direction also got a lot of good feedback about how exciting it was being pirated.


[video=youtube;ZA28WdnRFTU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA28WdnRFTU[/video]

BUT and it’s a big BUT!
The moment you start talking about giving an incentive to trade in open, locking modes, separate save files or ANYTHING that might possibly push the game forwards.
The Kickstarter brigade start their sirens and the thread either gets locked down or merged with the Open vs Solo thread, quicker than a T9 Player combat logs in a CG.
( Even though, many of this games issues seem to be caused by this. )

But as I want this thread to continue, so I ( and potentially FD ) can understand what, if anything will actually get people back into open.
Let’s leave that can of worms, well alone.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Arjin]

Allowing players to issue a bounty on the one who killed them would be a good start, If the offending cmndr was killed by an authority ship at any time after the infraction the bounty would be paid to the victim. This would at least allow for some form of compensation because as Chystoph mentioned above there is no reward for being a victim.

But in order to really sum it up, you will never get the majority of players to play in open simply because they do not want the forced interaction of other players period end of story. It has been this way since the very beginning of MMO's it will always be that way. Punishing the offender is not enough reason simple as that.

Players are not going to voluntarily      away millions of creds if it can be avoided and it can so there ya have it.

 

[KestrelPi]

The excitement of being pirated is in its self a reward.

:|

If you think being pirated is its own reward, maybe this is why you think that simple gameplay fixes will lure a lot of people into open. But for a lot of us it's not just that at the moment there's no appropriate crime and punishment response (which there isn't) but it's just that we don't see any appeal whatsoever about being a trader with very slim chance to avoid being destroyed being accosted and demanding we drop loot. Nothing about that sounds exciting to me. Each to their own, but I just don't really get how that is excitement for either party. So I don't play in open.

Not to mention that when you get interdicted by a player there's not always a way of telling whether that's the 'excitement' you're going to get or if it's going to be more of the 'someone just wants to blow you up, and can do it in a few seconds' variety.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Currently there is no real reason to go into Anarchy Space, so saying that is only where PVP should happen just won’t.

Until this changes, nothing else will. Indeed, nothing else can.

 

[DaveB]

...BUT and it’s a big BUT!
The moment you start talking about giving an incentive to trade in open, locking modes, separate save files or ANYTHING that might possible push the game forwards.
The Kickstarter brigade start their sirens and the thread either gets locked down or merged with the Open vs Solo thread, quicker than a T9 Player combat logs in a CG.
( Even though, many of this games issues seem to be caused by this. )

But as I want this thread to continue, so I ( and potentially FD ) can understand what, if anything will actually get people back into open.
Let’s leave that can of worms, well alone.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

I think in many ways that's coming at this from the wrong direction. I do not think we need an incentive for players to be in open for the open pirates to have targets for their piracy.

There will always be some players who will stick in solo or in a private group that disallows PvP, saying "Why go open? There's pirates there!" - which is basically "nyahnyah, you can't touch me!" - well, yes. The rest of us CAN touch them without firing a shot in their direction. We can have more of us working for our power, our BGS project, our side of a CG than there are of them. That's fine and its how its supposed to work. However, I doubt that these players constitute a majority or even a plurality of people that "never come to open (anymore)" and they aren't what you are looking for as a PvP player anyway. They won't give you a decent fight and if you try and pirate them the likelihood that they'll just logoffski makes them not worth your time. You're not going to pull these guys into open with any kind of incentive that doesn't border on the ridiculous.

IMHO what is required is some way to inconvenience the kind of gameplay that makes people who would otherwise play in open more tend to avoid that mode because of the asinine behavior of other players. Trying to have FD say "don't do this" and enforce it by bans or any other kind of out-of-game mechanics is just a huge game of whack-a-mole. It will never work. Bans are for cheats, repeated and egregious ToS violations and should be account-wide and permanent. Any other kind of behavior that needs minimizing in the game needs to be handled by game mechanics that make acting the at not fun for the player doing it. You can't do that through credits alone, even messing with the insurance excess - credits are too easy to obtain and always will be unless trading gets nerfed so far into the ground that it will take a new player a years grind to get out their sidey. Short of that point any monetary penalty for being an ass will not be enough to deter the players that have fun being asses.

"casual crime" is handled about right at the moment. The occasional criminal doesn't suffer too much from the consequences and can "make it right" pretty easily. Career criminals such as pirates or smugglers for the most part should mostly only have to deal with fines for assault (shooting out somebodies drives/fsd/hatch etc) and illicit cargo - if they are actually attempting to play that role in the game. It's the serial murderers that need the fun taking out of indulging in that activity for its own sake by a serious in-game inconvenience like extended bans on docking across entire major factions, the inability to rise above "unfriendly" status with half the minor factions in the galaxy, a power declaring them persona non grata in their sphere of influence (so they count as "enemy" whether they are aligned to an opposing power or not and ejected from that power if they were previously aligned to it with the same consequences as if they'd defected)

I'm sure somebody will trot out the argument "but I RP a psychotic murderer!" and that's fine, you're welcome to do so, but then part of your RP will be that nobody will want you in their space and everybody and their ships cat will be out for a piece of you any way they can get it. If you are genuinely doing that RP that should enhance your experience. If it's just an excuse for "PvP-for-lulz" it probably won't feel so good which is also fine because like I said - we don't need to incentivize open, we need to take the fun out of the behavior that disincentivizes it without killing off the perfectly valid careers of Pirate or Smuggler.

 

[Jack Schitt]

Another "I want your opinions, but not these ones I'm pre-emptively dismissing" thread. I'm sorry but it doesn't work that way. All of the points you dismiss in the OP are valid elements of an overall strategy for developing a sensible, believable and non-game-breaking response system for the ED galaxy. But they have to be used in conjunction with each other and they have to be used subtly.

Any system that emerges from this process will do so slowly, with great difficulty, and with every tweak leading to various subsets of the player base screaming that it has ruined their style of play. There is no "one size fits all" quick fix. Which is almost certainly one of the reasons why FD are still dragging their heels, if indeed they intend to change anything at all. As I said over on another thread, "Any significant changes to crime and punishment, even if embraced by the majority, will seem like a bait-and-switch to those who enjoy the current system. I'm not sure there's ever going to be an answer to this now. The damage is done."

 

[Ziljan]

But personally, I care more about mitigating my losses than punishing an attacker. I have been advocating that the game should waive rebuy and repair at all when a player damages or kills another one. Killed in PvP, rebuy is free. Damaged in PvP, repair is free. Regardless of criminal status, who attacked or where it took place. I don't mind PvP, I don't mind getting blown up, but I do mind losing an hour or more worth of trading, NPC bounty hunting etc.

This only makes sense in the context of Power Play. Free (or heavily discounted) PVP repairs and rebuys would be normal and expected when you are in a Navy. Military losses where a major faction or galactic power acts like an insurance policy against PVP death and damage should be a perk of signing up.

Of course to keep it balanced, your rebuy discount should be tied to your reputation with that faction. For instance, if you have a massive rebuy because of illegal PVP activity in your own factions space then your Military discount won't cover the cost of your bad behavior. But if you are fighting legally pledged targets then you are in the clear with no rebuy cost for PVP losses incurred in the service of your power.

Imagine that you were on a military bombing mission for the CIA and lost your plane, and then the Pentagon sent you a bill for 30 Million dollars. Who signs up for that? Or volunteer and risk their own plane? For minimum wage??

 

[the100thmonkey]

Actually, based on DaveB's post above (full of good points, well made):

How about some flexibility from the pirates?

What would it take to get PvP-oriented players and groups invested in the BGS? How can the BGS become more relevant to 'pure' traders, who are primarily interested in profit? The BGS is the only constant in the game, given that the alternate modes aren't going away.

Basically, if you have however many groups basically playing different games (again, the modes aren't going away), how can the only constant frame of reference available be exploited to encourage interaction between them?

 

[Sandmann]

The excitement of being pirated is in its self a reward.

You've got that half right. It SHOULD read "the excitement of being pirated is in itself a reward IF you enjoy it, IF you haven't already been pirated three times this week, IF you don't encount a "pirate" who is actually just trying to terrorise sideys and haulers in his anaconda..." and so on. Solo and mobius are FULL of people for whom piracy itself has NOT been a rewarding experience which is why they are avoiding it, not seeking it out. The question is, are you expecting those players to change their minds about what they enjoy, or are you willing to change piracy so that it is more enjoyable by more people?

Let’s leave that can of worms, well alone.

As you well know it's NOT the "kickstarter brigade" (as you so disparagingly refer to them) but frontier themselves who have knocked this idea on the head. They have been very clear and very consiatent with their message about the modes remaining equal, and even without that the technical and balancing issues would be enormous and would require rewriting large portions of the game and a huge investment in extra servers etc. If you wanted to push that agenda you should have done so three years ago, it's way too late now.

But in order to really sum it up, you will never get the majority of players to play in open simply because they do not want the forced interaction of other players period end of story. It has been this way since the very beginning of MMO's it will always be that way. Punishing the offender is not enough reason simple as that.

Players are not going to voluntarily away millions of creds if it can be avoided and it can so there ya have it.

Yup, this is the bit that the code and many others like them just can't seem to grasp. It's great that you started this thread with an apparently open mind - kudos for that - but they've already been telling you why they're in solo/group for ages... they keep saying things like "being a victim isn't fun" and "i'm not here to.be your content" but you don't seem to believe.l them. It doesn't matter how convinced YOU are that it's fun, THEY don't like it! (One could enquire why, if it's so much fun, YOU don't offer to be the victim.)

Thing is there are MANY players who simply DON'T WANT PVP of any sort. It doesn't matter if you triple their credits in open or offer them free paintjobs or any other blandishments... the ONLY reason people play is for FUN and they WON'T play a game they don't find fun, and VERY few people find being a victim fun (especially in the way it's done now).

Make safe areas in open and you'll get SOME players back, but even then they won't all venture into the unsafe areas, and if the safe areas become unsafe they'll go back to solo/group. Why? For the same reason that tourism in egypt and kenya has plummetted... MOST people don't think it's fun to be a victim. If you want them to find it fun, they're going to need a level of safety - eg: some sort of assurance that they'll survive, still have most of their cargo, and not be so often mugged that they feel like a punching bag. And this ISN'T up to the traders to organise, coz they are just fine where they are now. If you WANT them to change, you need to offer them a REASON to do so. As you pointed out in your original post pirates NEED victims, but traders however do NOT need pirates, and the few who do enjoy being victimised are already in open.

 

[Vasious]

I personally don't like the idea of there being a difference between Player on Player crime vs Player on NPC crime.
Escalating responses by Minor Factions, then Major Faction wide bounties, denial of permission to dock etc etc should be just the consequence of crime, regardless of if it is PvP or PvE.

Security ratings of systems, their government, faction allegiance, and the types of ships targeted should all play a part in the escalation of response, but we should all play by the same rules.
High Security systems belong to Major powers should be safe and quick to issue Major faction wide bounties, dispatch bounty hunters, and issue travel or docking bans.
Back waters with little wealth and security less so

Pirates and murders alike (does this include the opposing PP faction Murder which is a crime but they are an Enemy as well so mixed messages as to any additional penalties response?) can then base themselves out of Anarchies or independent systems where they can keep their noses clean, or base in a Major faction and cross the boarder to committee crimes, but all the while having to deal with a mark on them when they cross the boarder, needed to return home or flee the neutral jurisdiction and hope Player and NPC bounty hunters don't cross the boarder themselves to risk being labelled a murder as well by claiming their extra-jurisdictional bounty.

See that's s the thing, we have the wonderful KWS, which are, in my view, mean to encourage the cross the board to find the criminals with huge bounties, say in the Federation, but are currently hiding in say an Alliance system where they are clean, so the bounty hunter is faced with the "Do I commit the crime of murder in the Alliance to claim this Federation bounty"

This game play isn't really a thing, and this would seem to punish that further as it would be "clean murder' as far as jurisdiction and crime would go.

Okay so Players are Part of the Pilots Federation and so they might disagree with infighting to a degree, but if I as a player go to a low security back water in a poorly defensible ship, I should be aware and accept that is a risk, be it from a player or NPC, and I don't see why the PF should get involved if another member boils me.

 

[Phosphora]

I will *never* play in Open.

If Solo remains an option I will play there, and buy the occasional skin to help Frontier.

If Solo is closed down (very unlikely) I will leave the game. No money to Frontier in that case.

People have different personalities. Frontier have recognised this with Solo/Group mode. You can disagree and think that everyone has the same personality, but Frontier are very unlikely to agree with you.

Cheers, Phos.

 

[Mohrgan]

I believe that improving the crime/punishment mechanism will improve the game over all. What it won;t do is make open attractive to as many people as FD hopes. What a non-PvP player wants is an environment where this requirement is accommodated. That doesn't mean that some players won't come back for a taste but, it's not going to make open's population explode.

The simple bottom line is that no one wants to be a victim. That answers all of the questions. Players that choose to stay in open learn to become fighters. They out fit their ships for that purpose, and gain tactics to defend themselves. Which necessarily removes them from the victim pool because they have no cargo, and aren't easy targets. Those that don;t want to run around in a ship that is only able to participate in one aspect of the game will look for an environment that allows them to enjoy all of the content FD develops. I am in this camp. I don;t want to have to be a perpetual victim because I want to drive an SRV, offer some spare fuel, or scan some systems.

For open to become what it was dreamed it would/could be, we would have to over come human nature. One game cannot do that. This is why we have the mode system we have now. To accommodate as many player points of view as possible. This discussion really should only encompass what enjoyment and game play can be derived by improving the C/P system, not so much whether or not the improvement will/can help increase the population in open.

A simple observation: Open can and will only support those that enjoy the environment as it is, C/P changes included.

 

[terrycloth]

Until this changes, nothing else will. Indeed, nothing else can.

Right. Increasing the punishment for PvP isn't interesting to me because (a) I care more about my own losses than about spite, and (b) I find it really hard to believe that the punishments would actually fall on the 'bad' PvPers and not on innocent victims who were tricked into triggering the system's response.

So the things that would make me play in open are either to make losing PvP less painful ('no rebuy if a player damaged you', for example -- it's abusable but the abuses are relatively harmless because hardly anyone goes out looking to get killed) (also... I sort of get why they clear bounties and exploration data, but if they could not do that it would help a lot) or to make PvP stay in designated areas that I can avoid unless I know I'm doing something specifically risky.

If there was an equivalent of a Robigo run that had you flying into anarchy space to deliver the cargo, that would be an appropriate place to have traders risking PvP. Or a reasonable suggestion was to make prices in Anarchies really high because it's difficult to get consistent supply from theoretical NPCs, so it's always a good place to sell stuff (but not a good place to buy stuff; there's less risk on the way out anyway). If you want profit on the way out you take shadow deliveries.

...then you *somehow* have to make potential PvP interdictions suppress potential NPC interdictions, so that you have a reason to do this in Open instead of Solo (or less of a reason not to). Maybe have a pool of 'pirates' operating in a system based on its security rating and wanted CMDRs count against that.

 

[askavir]

There is only one way to give bounties any kind of meaning, while also shifting some of the risk of murder to the murderer, without resorting to "magic" mechanics of instant justice.

When destroying a "clean" ship in a non-anarchy system: (human or NPC, as rules should always apply to everyone)

1 - The value of the bounty should scale according to the value of the rebuy of all the destroyed property. If one destroys 3 ships which cost 5 million each to rebuy, the bounty should be 15M.
2 - If the murdered is destroyed in a system where the bounty is valid, the bounty value should be deducted from the felon credit balance.

With these 2 changes in place, bounties actually start meaning something, the murderers now also risks something themselves, and maybe bounty hunters would have a motivation to chase felons (really now no one would risk his ship trying to kill a human player for a 100k bounty). And there is no magic involved.

 

[DaveB]

I'm not going to quote individuals because it's been said so many times but saying that "people won't come into open and voluntarily be victims and risk millions of credits" is looking at it way too simplistically. If I'm in a good enough mood that I can cope with the idiots, should I encounter them, I'll play in open and it's not to "be a victim" - any pirate wants my cargo he's going to have to work for it and if he ends up getting some of it I'll thank him for any good RP that happened and frameshift out of there with a grin. That's not being a "victim", that's being a "player". I'm not going to refuse to play chess against you because I might lose, it will still be a fun game. Same for Elite - most pirates are better pilots than I am but I"ll still play with them because they are prepared to actually play as opposed to knocking the board over just because they can.

It's not the credits for lost cargo or even ship rebuys that's the issue, it's the annoyance factor. I WANT to play in open, pirates and all, but right now the PvP population consists of more jerks than pirates. When every other PvP encounter is "oh look, a wing of combat ships just opened fire on me for no reason" THAT is what is keeping people like me out of open. Nothing to do with risk or credits or incentives. Encountering pirates is fun, those other guys not so much. With the normal stresses of everyday life I play elite to unwind some, not get my already-iffy mood spoiled even further by folks who only care about being jerks. When the pirates outnumber the jerks and a PvP encounter in open is likely to actually be "gameplay" rather than just another firefight (which I could get from CQC if I were so inclined) THEN you'll see more players in open and a greater level of acceptance for even non-consensual PvP in Elite.

Encourage the Pirates. Don't spoil their game. Make the jerks lives so frustrating by gameplay mechanics that they'll go find somewhere else to get their lulz.

 

[JosiahD]

That's what I was getting at with "Removal of docking privileges in Minor Faction / Power / Major Faction stations and bases (escalating depending on wanted level);" - Low wanted level = minor faction denial; Medium wanted level = Power denial; High wanted level = Major Faction; probably supplemented by Highest wanted level = docking ban in civilised space (but not particular systems with a soft spot for offenders, of course).

That's the sort of scaled docking privileges restrictions I would like to see also. I'd extend to include superpower-wide in certain circumstances also - commit sufficient crimes in Fed space for example and get blacklisted across all Fed-controlled stations/outposts, regardless of the factions in control. Or is that what you meant by 'major faction'

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

No "level of consequence" will do much about the fact that there are players who loathe being forced into competitive gameplay.