PKing (player killing), griefing or ganking is an activity which has little consequence and no reason to exist in universe, I would like to propose some changes to the way that murdering players affects the murderers and also discuss the profitability of piracy.
-Players who kill a certain number of players (for example: 5) as the aggressor (victim having retracted hardpoints or having the crime reporting function turned on) will gain a symbol (such as a red nameplate or symbol by their name) that marks them as a serial murderer of player pilots. This symbol could grow more elaborate as they gain more kills but only the presence of the symbol will bestow the following effects: The player will have a notoriety effect which makes them more likely to be scanned and interdicted by system auth. (this effect will be separate from the normal notoriety score) and will give the player a bonus to reputation gained with pirate factions in all systems. bonus credits and possibly an alternate symbol or nameplate could be awarded to players who kill murderous players.
-In order to remove this effect the player must take a number (could be based on amount of players pked) of "community service" missions which could be commodity donation, search and rescue, or other "good will" missions
-To accompany this feature I propose a small buff to payouts for pirate faction missions as wells as high paying missions for killing player pilots of a certain combat ranking (any player as long as they meet the mission specified rank requirement). An alternate mission type could be offered from non-pirate factions to hunt these murderer players which would have a smaller payout.
NOTE: this feature is for open-play only and players who collude to kill each other to manipulate these states and receive rewards from missions may be subject to bans or other adjudication.
This feature would set PKers apart from the rest of the playerbase and give new and old players fair warning to their prescience. This acts as a higher risk and reward as the players PKing will receive credits and reputation but also be exposed to bounty hunters who can more easily identify them in-game. Marking player who kill other players is common practice in many mmos and here it should be no different.
On the subject of Piracy, it is currently a playstyle which is mostly for fun as the commodities gained from the act do not bring particularly good profits. This is a shame since it is a type of gameplay that incurs more risk than most other activities. In particular PvP piracy is a very niche activity that should have more tangible rewards tied to it, but PvE piracy has more room to be fixed:
-Convoy dispersal pattern signal sources have a small chance to have "Jackpot" haulers which carry absurdly high value commodities which are not normally found elsewhere. These commodities would be worth upwards of 500,000CR and labeled as a number of specific high value items such as art, jewelry, data canisters, high-value vips, etc, etc. These can only be sold at black markets.
-These high-value convoys will mostly be heavily protected but have a very small chance to be unprotected
-Hacking limpets are a new limpet controller type which acts similarly to hatch breakers except they steal players credit based data such as data point scans, exploration data, or combat vouchers. These can be ejected like cargo or simply downloaded but this gives PvP piracy another way to steal credits and makes interdicting non haulers a worthwhile option. If used against a NPC it will gave a random small amount of CR or could just do nothing. Hatchbreakers could also have a small chance to leak data in the same way. these limpets could also just steal credits directly but that would likely be a risky feature to implement.
These features aim to make piracy a more legitimate activity. By providing rare valuable convoys to search for, PvE pirates will be able to challenge themselves with rare difficult encounters and get a payout that they can actually fit in their cargo hold and that will make their time searching worthwhile. Hacking/dataleak limpets can offer a boost to the amount of credits pirate players can earn from a given encounter and give explorers a reason to cash in their data early and often.
Thanks for reading and if your have any thoughts, suggestions or criticism please let me know.
o7
Also I aim to post more suggestions like this for discussion every week since I have a lot more ideas.
-Players who kill a certain number of players (for example: 5) as the aggressor (victim having retracted hardpoints or having the crime reporting function turned on) will gain a symbol (such as a red nameplate or symbol by their name) that marks them as a serial murderer of player pilots. This symbol could grow more elaborate as they gain more kills but only the presence of the symbol will bestow the following effects: The player will have a notoriety effect which makes them more likely to be scanned and interdicted by system auth. (this effect will be separate from the normal notoriety score) and will give the player a bonus to reputation gained with pirate factions in all systems. bonus credits and possibly an alternate symbol or nameplate could be awarded to players who kill murderous players.
-In order to remove this effect the player must take a number (could be based on amount of players pked) of "community service" missions which could be commodity donation, search and rescue, or other "good will" missions
-To accompany this feature I propose a small buff to payouts for pirate faction missions as wells as high paying missions for killing player pilots of a certain combat ranking (any player as long as they meet the mission specified rank requirement). An alternate mission type could be offered from non-pirate factions to hunt these murderer players which would have a smaller payout.
NOTE: this feature is for open-play only and players who collude to kill each other to manipulate these states and receive rewards from missions may be subject to bans or other adjudication.
This feature would set PKers apart from the rest of the playerbase and give new and old players fair warning to their prescience. This acts as a higher risk and reward as the players PKing will receive credits and reputation but also be exposed to bounty hunters who can more easily identify them in-game. Marking player who kill other players is common practice in many mmos and here it should be no different.
On the subject of Piracy, it is currently a playstyle which is mostly for fun as the commodities gained from the act do not bring particularly good profits. This is a shame since it is a type of gameplay that incurs more risk than most other activities. In particular PvP piracy is a very niche activity that should have more tangible rewards tied to it, but PvE piracy has more room to be fixed:
-Convoy dispersal pattern signal sources have a small chance to have "Jackpot" haulers which carry absurdly high value commodities which are not normally found elsewhere. These commodities would be worth upwards of 500,000CR and labeled as a number of specific high value items such as art, jewelry, data canisters, high-value vips, etc, etc. These can only be sold at black markets.
-These high-value convoys will mostly be heavily protected but have a very small chance to be unprotected
-Hacking limpets are a new limpet controller type which acts similarly to hatch breakers except they steal players credit based data such as data point scans, exploration data, or combat vouchers. These can be ejected like cargo or simply downloaded but this gives PvP piracy another way to steal credits and makes interdicting non haulers a worthwhile option. If used against a NPC it will gave a random small amount of CR or could just do nothing. Hatchbreakers could also have a small chance to leak data in the same way. these limpets could also just steal credits directly but that would likely be a risky feature to implement.
These features aim to make piracy a more legitimate activity. By providing rare valuable convoys to search for, PvE pirates will be able to challenge themselves with rare difficult encounters and get a payout that they can actually fit in their cargo hold and that will make their time searching worthwhile. Hacking/dataleak limpets can offer a boost to the amount of credits pirate players can earn from a given encounter and give explorers a reason to cash in their data early and often.
Thanks for reading and if your have any thoughts, suggestions or criticism please let me know.
o7
Also I aim to post more suggestions like this for discussion every week since I have a lot more ideas.
