I saw ship names up in the general list of suggestions and had an idea for how to expand on that and couple it with some potential ideas to fix up pvp consequences and roleplay elements within the game.
1: Instead of player names. Show ship names.
-There are multiple ways this could affect the game in both good and bad ways.
-Showing ship names only, from an RP perspective, allows RP Pirates to engage in pirate activity and then, when needed, allows them to also continue on with pve / normal content. To do this the bounties and fines would have to be tied to that particular ship and that ship alone. This would coincide with some items Sandro mentioned, specifically restricting player access to certain stations in higher security systems, or to higher security systems in general. So that a player who pirates does not become a player restricted only to the shadier corners of the bubble. (C'mon now! Pirates had secret lives too..) However, a player who takes part in indiscriminate killing of other players, after reaching a certain threshold, would have his pilot and ship names broadcast across the faction he's taken on his bounty in. This keeps normal pirates who don't kill everything they see from being punished too harshly while also taking the heavier PvP oriented players and placing them into more lawless space, preventing them from coming into the higher security systems by making them risk all against both player and NPC security.
-The potential to abuse said system are there, of course, where a player could switch ships and just move along to cause more havoc, but to circumvent that type of abuse the system could be built to immediately transfer all existing bounties and fines to the new ship as well at the first sign of repeat behavior or through some way of tying the pilot in to the fines without actually placing them back on him the instant he's scanned by system security while doing nothing wrong. I also think a good portion of our more violent segment of players would enjoy having some notoriety associated with their ship name (which also helps a bit once multi-crew comes along). The only way to actually get around it legally would be to switch faction space. Bounty in Empire? Head to Federation..
-All of it ties into the proposed changes Sandro dropped into the "PvP is Unfair" thread.
-As with all systems I'm sure a few would figure out a way to abuse it.
2: Remove player indicators in general.
-While I can see the downside of this as potentially taking away that feeling of being part of a group of people, even if you don't know each other, when no hollow boxes popped up on the radar, it would also go a long way to helping mitigate the indiscriminate murder of newer players. Some of the problems faced by players in open take place outside of community event stations and in area of the bubble known to many as starter areas. We saw this recently with the CG at Okinura and previously at pretty much all of the prior CGs, as well as on Merope when the first barnacle was found. However, without the hollow indicator or CMDR tag in front of a player's name it becomes much harder to weed out the real from the computer controlled and would lead to less heartache. It's also not a game changing fix in terms of mechanics, at least not from my perspective.
Of course, removing player names or names in general leaves FDev with the task of swapping in a plethora of ship names for NPCs to match the theme change but it would still be a nice change to benefit both parties (PvE/PvP).
1: Instead of player names. Show ship names.
-There are multiple ways this could affect the game in both good and bad ways.
-Showing ship names only, from an RP perspective, allows RP Pirates to engage in pirate activity and then, when needed, allows them to also continue on with pve / normal content. To do this the bounties and fines would have to be tied to that particular ship and that ship alone. This would coincide with some items Sandro mentioned, specifically restricting player access to certain stations in higher security systems, or to higher security systems in general. So that a player who pirates does not become a player restricted only to the shadier corners of the bubble. (C'mon now! Pirates had secret lives too..) However, a player who takes part in indiscriminate killing of other players, after reaching a certain threshold, would have his pilot and ship names broadcast across the faction he's taken on his bounty in. This keeps normal pirates who don't kill everything they see from being punished too harshly while also taking the heavier PvP oriented players and placing them into more lawless space, preventing them from coming into the higher security systems by making them risk all against both player and NPC security.
-The potential to abuse said system are there, of course, where a player could switch ships and just move along to cause more havoc, but to circumvent that type of abuse the system could be built to immediately transfer all existing bounties and fines to the new ship as well at the first sign of repeat behavior or through some way of tying the pilot in to the fines without actually placing them back on him the instant he's scanned by system security while doing nothing wrong. I also think a good portion of our more violent segment of players would enjoy having some notoriety associated with their ship name (which also helps a bit once multi-crew comes along). The only way to actually get around it legally would be to switch faction space. Bounty in Empire? Head to Federation..
-All of it ties into the proposed changes Sandro dropped into the "PvP is Unfair" thread.
-As with all systems I'm sure a few would figure out a way to abuse it.
2: Remove player indicators in general.
-While I can see the downside of this as potentially taking away that feeling of being part of a group of people, even if you don't know each other, when no hollow boxes popped up on the radar, it would also go a long way to helping mitigate the indiscriminate murder of newer players. Some of the problems faced by players in open take place outside of community event stations and in area of the bubble known to many as starter areas. We saw this recently with the CG at Okinura and previously at pretty much all of the prior CGs, as well as on Merope when the first barnacle was found. However, without the hollow indicator or CMDR tag in front of a player's name it becomes much harder to weed out the real from the computer controlled and would lead to less heartache. It's also not a game changing fix in terms of mechanics, at least not from my perspective.
Of course, removing player names or names in general leaves FDev with the task of swapping in a plethora of ship names for NPCs to match the theme change but it would still be a nice change to benefit both parties (PvE/PvP).
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