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Agreed - I just came back to edit that fact in!
Reward Gankers for Kills
- Thread starter CMDR SoldiersFortune
- Start date
Agreed - I just came back to edit that fact in!
Some of that thirst for justice and fairness is not only because of, well, my own real-world personality and beliefs. It also has to do with game mechanics and incentives: "fairness", or at least a sense/illusion of it, is one of the most coveted features of good game design. This is true for AI (nobody wants to feel like the AI is cheating), and especially true for human player interactions. No style of playing should be at an advantage or disadvantage to others.
Freedom is a funny concept: often, freedoms are best protected by curtailing some freedoms. In any functioning civilized society, freedom to life and pursuit of happiness is chosen over freedom to kill, for example. The Elite universe also depicts an actual, functioning society - in some areas more and in some less functioning and civilized. Also, the community of Elite players are, in a very real sense, a micro-society in its own right. So, not only should, for suspension of disbelief, the Elite universe do a better job at portraying a society in which senseless acts of violence aren't tolerated. The game and FDev should also clearly convey the message, that members of that micro-society have equal rights and nobody's freedom to enjoy the game their way entitles them to infringe on others' freedom to enjoy theirs. Ganking is at the bottom a way to extract pleasure at the expense of others; a profoundly antisocial and selfish act that should not have a place in the community. I think in this regard, FDev has failed spectacularly to draw a line. And Solo/PG are not a solutions: it's basically stripping a group of players of their freedom to enjoy the game fully. This is especially true for players who do not have a group or friends or a squadron to play with, but would still want if not a "social game", at least the chance of random encounters (other than being ganked) with their peers.
This doesn't mean being the bad guy shouldn't be an option, since the freedom to blaze your own trail is central to Elite. This is exactly where the "difficult" in promoting positive and discouraging negative adversial playing style comes from and what you probably mean with "difficult balance problem". Again, I consider it a failure on FDev's part. Clearly, there is or was an intent to do something about it (C&P), but they seemingly dropped the ball and just... gave up? And I can't stress this enough: there are ways to be the bad guy that contribute to the game. Or at least there should be. As it stands, being a murderous ganker bent on ruining other people's fun is no worse than being a pirate, which should be a valid "career" and can contribute to meaningful and exciting player interactions. This is the problem that really needs to be solved. Suggestions?
Being a murderous randomganker is easier than being a pirate because getting the drop on someone and blowing them out of the sky before they realise what's happening is a lot easier than, say, trying to carefully disable someone without killing them, or hatchbreak them only for them to log out and you get maybe a couple of canisters of limpets.
Exactly. A complete failure of game mechanics and incentives, there.
Again, there are low hanging fruit that could at least marginally improve the situation. One being enabling cargo scanning (with range restrictions) in supercruise. Not only would it make locating a suitable target easier, but also give at least some form of indication, that the other commander is indeed after cargo, not murder. Also, paired with increased smuggling pay outs, this would make smuggling more interesting (would be my favourite bad boy activity if it didn't thoroughly suck). Another very obvious improvement would be the ability to have a handful of chat message macros for quickly making your demands.
Hey, an idea (or: Incoming transmission from the Big Giant Head).
To make the current "subspace" manifest scanning easier, have it happen automatically when a ship is targeted, as long as the ship is within range and scanning arc. Even better, add an engineering option for enabling a stealth scan, which takes longer and has shorter range, but doesn't alert the target to the scanning. This would allow pirates to identify lucrative targets leaving stations, so they can follow them for an opportunity to attack.
To make the current "subspace" manifest scanning easier, have it happen automatically when a ship is targeted, as long as the ship is within range and scanning arc. Even better, add an engineering option for enabling a stealth scan, which takes longer and has shorter range, but doesn't alert the target to the scanning. This would allow pirates to identify lucrative targets leaving stations, so they can follow them for an opportunity to attack.
Chat message macros that put the other person "in danger" so they'd have a timer for logging out, paired with a HUD indication that someone is just logging out on you would be great.Exactly. A complete failure of game mechanics and incentives, there.
Again, there are low hanging fruit that could at least marginally improve the situation. One being enabling cargo scanning (with range restrictions) in supercruise. Not only would it make locating a suitable target easier, but also give at least some form of indication, that the other commander is indeed after cargo, not murder. Also, paired with increased smuggling pay outs, this would make smuggling more interesting (would be my favourite bad boy activity if it didn't thoroughly suck). Another very obvious improvement would be the ability to have a handful of chat message macros for quickly making your demands.
Imagine if a menulog after an attempted (or successful, for that matter) hatchbreak resulted in them automatically dropping a fraction of their cargo - piracy would get at least some loot from people that don't want to play along, and gankers... well, it makes no difference, since a ganker is either going to kill you in the time it takes for you to menulog, or you didn't need to log in the first place and could just escape. Either way logging would cease to be an issue for the intended criminal/hostile gameplay.
Although I would support a way to increase piracy rewards as a play style. I don't think that player killers who do it for the lols should be rewarded monetarily. If they're doing killing players for the pvp thrill, then I feel that there should be a better way to track down player killers down. Something like a universal bounty board where the top 100 player killer commanders (Personally, I've always thought that you should only really get notoriety for killing other players) are listed as well as their current whereabouts, as long as they're not in an anarchy system. That way it gives warning to other commanders can avoid the areas where most of the player killer are or they can go after their bounties.
That way the player killers get a little fame for being up on the bad boy bounty board but they do have to balance that against the possibility that they might get a posse of Bounty Hunter players coming after them.
That way the player killers get a little fame for being up on the bad boy bounty board but they do have to balance that against the possibility that they might get a posse of Bounty Hunter players coming after them.
The irony is you get Arx for killing anything. Crime does pay
I like the idea of having a higher percentage of dropping G5 matt's when killing another player depending on how many engineered modules they have. A noob in a sidewinder won't likely have anything of value or very low quality engineering while a fully engineered corvette will yield quite a few G5's. It's not likely a player will just sit and let their friends keep blowing up their 60 million cr rebuy for a handful of matts. It would encourage players to fight more experienced players and give legitimate PVPers some actual reward for their kills.
It won't happen though as it would be exploited. This is why we can't have nice things.
It won't happen though as it would be exploited. This is why we can't have nice things.
That should be not just about a cosmetic items, rather a whole underground way of play ED. Right now, the game does not have any piracy option for players, no piracy factions to join, no pirate-related "superpower", nothing.
It would be great to have any meaningful way to play as a pirate/raider/ganker...
It would be great to have any meaningful way to play as a pirate/raider/ganker...
I agree. Except "meaningful play as a ganker". Salt is the meaning, and as I've stated, it's not something to be encouraged or rewarded. Quite the opposite.
Piracy factions or powers... well, there's Archon Delaine and Kumo Crew. You can pledge to Delaine, AFAIK. But that's pretty much it. I've suggested in related threads, that the criminal underworld should be more fleshed out. A shadow society. For example, black markets are simply lame. You just jump into a system and they publicly announce their presence? Anyone can access it, just like that?! And don't get me started on how ridiculously underpaid and un-fun smuggling is...
I think black markets should be unlocked by improving rep with the dominant local criminal faction. And they should definitely be more lucrative! There should be specific "free ports" that are run by criminal factions and would trade everything, regardless of the goods' legal status. They also wouldn't give a
about notoriety and wanted status, as long as you're not wanted by them. Part of this idea was, that at higher notoriety levels (which ganking would achieve very quickly) one simply would have a very difficult time in the "civilized" or lawful regions and need to head to a free port to cool off. Perhaps, with high enough rep or standing (yes, perhaps some major crime syndicates could have "ranks"), one would be able to clean ships and modules, even lower notoriety, for a price.More related ramblings in the PvP incentive thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/a-way-to-give-incentive-for-pvping.558156/#post-8788021
I don’t see why you should be rewarded for blowing up an unsuspecting newbie in his sidewinder... In fact I think gaming is NOT a part of the gameplay, think about it unlike a pirate you don’t get any valuable cargo out of it, and unlike a bounty hunter you don’t get a bounty (unless the player you shot down was wanted in which case he knew what he was risking). Think about it, in real life only people with psychological issues would attack you and kill you without reasons. It’s the same in-game, you want to reward that ?
Well, a pirate doesn't get anything out of shooting people either. Not directly anyway. From the pirate's POV, if you run they're not getting anything anyway, so there's no reason for them not to kill you as a warning to others (or in the case of this game, to that same player after they pay their rebuy) that they should comply next time.
From the target's point of view, it's a question of losing a small amount of cargo, versus losing it all and a rebuy on top - but this only works if the threat actually has teeth. There was an amusing argument on the elitepirates reddit a while ago with a guy who didn't seem to understand this part of being a pirate, arguing that if the pirate actually used their guns then they were just a horrible griefer/ganker.
From what I've gathered talking in system chat, as long as a pirate is reasonable, most experienced miners would rather drop a few tons of cargo even if they're flying a gankproof build if they're doing a mapped run, just because it's less hassle than trying to turn around and pick up where they left off. Even if they're not doing the mapped route, it's less hassle to comply with a small demand than it is to highwake, come back, and cruise all the way back to the ring again.
My friends and I have a simple solution. We play in PGs. I've no interest in contending with people who feel the need to stroke their egos because of whatever reason. "Woe is me I get bullied at school/work/social gatherings... guess I'll take it out on people online to make myself feel better!". Get a therapist. That will help you find a more constructive way to soothe your egos.
It got so bad that I just don't care about the "open" universe anymore. I'll do what I want, when I want, without the need to look over my shoulder every 4 seconds to wonder if some jerk with a chip on his shoulder needs to garner attention by demanding that griefing and ganking be rewarded. If Frontier give you the capability, you're going to run out of targets REAL fast. Then you won't get anything at all. And I'll laugh while I actually get to enjoy the game.
It got so bad that I just don't care about the "open" universe anymore. I'll do what I want, when I want, without the need to look over my shoulder every 4 seconds to wonder if some jerk with a chip on his shoulder needs to garner attention by demanding that griefing and ganking be rewarded. If Frontier give you the capability, you're going to run out of targets REAL fast. Then you won't get anything at all. And I'll laugh while I actually get to enjoy the game.
Think of gankers as primitive humans driven mad through chemicals?
Erm.. ok. Get's my vote!
Think of gankers as primitive humans driven mad through chemicals?
Erm.. ok. Get's my vote!
Reavers gunna reave...
If you're trying to play with friends the instancing is much better in PG anyway.