(Yet another) C&P proposal: preventative v. risk-based penalties

[to_boldy_go]

I dont think it has to be that hard.

Say aims are:

1. Make game playable by all especially newbies.eg A player no cargo no bounty no cargo should be safe in non anarchy warring systems. C&P system should make killing these player ships not worthwhile. A powerplay player in ememy teritory? Personally i think that should be open only as makes no sense in solo or groups! See point 2 - powerplay should be pvp mechanism

2. Encourage realistic PvP. I am a PvE player (well.mostly) and I think PvErrs benefit as well if challenging game play is provided for pvpers. This includes realistic piracy. Also as i have got better (and richer) i can risk a 10 mill rebuy in powerplay. So what? But early on ouch!

3. Make systems more realistic - but not discourage game play eg you assault a base should be different C&P effect than killing a noob in a siddie.

Start with list of aims then design a system.

Fdev designed a system then massive knee jerk responses to every player group that whined! Results eg interdictions are plainly stupid. Real dogs dinner of stupidity. Easy to avoid (npc).or run (pvp). So whole games turns stupid!

 

[Riverside]

Sorry but I can't see any sense at all in rewarding the very behaviour a Karma system is intended to discourage, and the implemented system, in whatever form it actually takes, certainly doesn't need to be attractive to the abusive players in order to be considered a success. Quite the opposite.

And on your second point, I think that breaking (or softening) the link between unacceptable behaviour and its consequences wouldn't help in discouraging people from heading down that path. There needs to be a fairly direct link, or at least direct enough that a player can understand that their own actions are the cause of their misfortune and not just believe that they're suffering because of random 'bad luck'.

I can understand that players who feel their freedom to harass others will be penalised are trying their best to get the system watered-down and made toothless (it appears unlikely they can stop it completely), as evidenced by the many threads already out there, but kudos to the OP for the attempt to turn it full circle and have it actually encourage & reward bad behaviour with more interesting/challenging game play [blah]

The Karma system's initial design goal is to discourage extreme behaviour. It does not have to do anything else, it doesn't need to provide increasing repercussions. The punishment for one too many clean player kills or combat logs could go nothing, nothing, nothing, reset your save.

It works, it ticks the boxes, and might be how it's initially implemented.

But the system could do more. It could use a sliding scale of punishment instead. This gives the opportunity for more varied playstyles, which is a concept that appeals to anyone who ever agreed with the crass phrase 'mile wide, inch deep'. It adds depth. It's (hopefully) never going to prevent your ship from being popped by another player as part of engaging play.

 

[William H. Bonney]

I’m a little confused over the differences between preventative and risk based penalties, by this I mean:

A commander would risk being prevented from docking if karma is extremely bad.
And
A commander can prevent docking refusal by having good karma.

Now that sounds initially obvious to me, but as always, there are key additional details to contend with. For instance, if I’m allied with a station’s controlling faction. They know me, they trust me and possibly shouldn’t care about my overall status as I’ve done good with them.

What I would propose, which (I believe) fits in nicely with the ethos of the original post would be, for example. Have a faster rate of reputation decline with them, based on the extremes (or lack of) of our karma. This would mean we would have to run more missions, take care of wanted folk in resource sites, etc for said faction to keep allied status. Ultimately this could also offer the ability to improve our overall karma situation elsewhere.
Each reputation bracket having a slightly faster decline the higher it goes. Being unfriendly (or whatever is below that, I’ve never seen it!) could be the segment that for example, would allow for the denial of docking if karma is still ultra-bad. This should however also work at the opposite end. If you have awesome karma, you should be given a slight bonus in reputation-gain with the factions.

----- 2nd thoughts :S --------

After reading all I have written above, I bizarrely feel a need to argue against myself!
If karma is likely to be based on player-to-player interactions, I see no real method of improving it on a player-v-player basis.
Is there a way to positively interact with players other than helping in wings/crew? If not, I don’t see why interactions with the background story should improve it. Doesn’t this essentially mean you can only have different scales of bad karma or none at all?

To clarify, how would we push ourselves into better or good karma? If it relates to the timescale between negative player-to-player interactions, that would surely make it arbitrary if you consider its design is somewhat one-sided if no counter-measure to the negatives are included. It would also mean that commanders in Solo or groups like Mobius will always have good karma, or is that the idea? I play in all different modes depending on what i'm doing and whilst this doesn't affect my play style of being friendly until hassled, i'm starting to see the struggles of implementing such a system that the developers are being faced with.

 

[FrogsFriend]

...But the system could do more. It could use a sliding scale of punishment instead. This gives the opportunity for more varied playstyles, which is a concept that appeals to anyone who ever agreed with the crass phrase 'mile wide, inch deep'. It adds depth. It's (hopefully) never going to prevent your ship from being popped by another player as part of engaging play.

I'd certainly agree with that. A sliding scale of reputation that doesn't prevent you from being a little naughty, but makes it increasingly difficult to try and ruin the game of everyone you meet. You get increasing negative karma for being a pain to other players, and drift back to neutral by not being a pain to other players. It doesn't really need any positive karma.

The proposed karma system is really a meta-game idea to help FD protect their Elite game universe from being toxic to the average player, and encourage them in to Open Play where it can be a (reasonably) social experience. That's not to imply that they have any intention of forcing people into Open, but I think they'd like more people to try it. The fact that they appear to be giving it some in-game rational is just window dressing really (which I agree with btw). Whatever the system, it needs to make 'bad' behaviour have un-fun consequences for those who do it.

I think that most people agree that in addition the Crime & Punishment system also needs upgrading to take care of in-game criminality and authority response to it. That should equally apply to Player-v-Player and Player-v-NPC.

 

[StiTch]

2. Encourage realistic PvP. I am a PvE player (well.mostly) and I think PvErrs benefit as well if challenging game play is provided for pvpers. This includes realistic piracy. Also as i have got better (and richer) i can risk a 10 mill rebuy in powerplay. So what? But early on ouch!

...

Fdev designed a system then massive knee jerk responses to every player group that whined! Results eg interdictions are plainly stupid. Real dogs dinner of stupidity. Easy to avoid (npc).or run (pvp). So whole games turns stupid!

You raise some good points In particular that everyone would benefit from challenging/tailored PvP content - I've said before that at almost every game mode argument, I'm stuck watching one group announce PvPers should stop harming nice normal players and go do their PvP content, and another group preaching that PvP content would be offensive because the game has to learn towards completely equal game modes. Ehwot now? Alas, this is not that discussion.

And yes, if we weren't so prone to kneejerk panic changes, perhaps we would have had scope to use cops/security for C&P in the first place, rather than constructing the Magical Space Good Boy Factor

I’m a little confused over the differences between preventative and risk based penalties, by this I mean:

A commander would risk being prevented from docking if karma is extremely bad.
And
A commander can prevent docking refusal by having good karma.

...

It would also mean that commanders in Solo or groups like Mobius will always have good karma, or is that the idea?

To clarify, preventative punishments make it impossible to enter - so if you request access, your request is denied outright - and the "risk based" alternative would be you can request the access, and it will be accepted as normal, and you can try to dock - but any scan from NPC (including non-cops; potential for good guys to call you out to local security?), station, or being too noticeable in some form on docking, and you'll have all local cops and the station go for you.

An anaconda and his chums...my cat could escape from them in a decent ship. But the station patrol and station guns?

Also, excellent point about PvE modes and positive karma. My hope would be that karma continually decays to 0, whether negative or positive, over a long(ish) period of time. Any changes made to this by CMDR must be done in a player-to-player environment and interaction, as that's what it looks at - CLing and murder, which are both seen as undesirable player-to-player interactions.

I don't think being able to wipe a bad karma score with half an hour hiding in Solo is advantageous to anyone.

but the idea is that the bad karma being so high means you are KNOWN and intel sought about you. if you are being stopped docking rights entirely at some stations its because you got too infamous. other consequences should be happening more than jut the normal bounty system and anaemic system security response. you should get wings of bounty hunting npcs interdict you or if more than 15 minutes in one system a naval task force with capital ship and many fighters drops in to say hello just for you. the rebuy screen will become your new neighbour any time you leave port

...

and even anarchy systems will not be safe

To cover the second thing here first, anarchy systems will not be touched by C&P. This has already been agreed to by Sandro, who put forward that if secure space is to exist, there must be a place for the less reputable to exist. There was a truly excellent reference made towards "hives of scum and villainy" if I remember correctly.

That in mind, this is pretty much the attitude I expected to appear. In effect the kneejerk punishment concept is just too irresistible to many; "stop them doing anything, that'll show 'em!". Unfortunately these boosted security responses, bounty hunters whatever are exactly the kind of situation a capable ganker couldn't care less about.

"Ooh, a few anacondas dropped in on me. I can't be bothered to wreck them all, but I'll be out of attack range in...oh, ten seconds ago". Having to avoid stations in high/low sec systems would be trivial, as would handling any NPC response, given that the community apparently decided ages ago we aren't allowed reasonable AI. As above, the panicked responses to challenge existing in PvE are the same responses that culled any hope of C&P being handled without magical content blocks in the first place.

In fact aside from the risk-based punishments I mention in OP, the only effective offender punishment would come from PvP in the form of forced Open and bounties on the offender's head, preferably visible to all. Now that is a discussion for another day, but would make for excellent supplementary risk to both playstyles deemed to unnecessarily carry none.

So in effect, this is down to whether the agreed "punishments" will be effective, or what the general forum community expects/wants to see. Hint: they are not one and the same thing...

That you're suggesting capital ships and proposing that an offender shouldn't be able to leave station without being blown up is pretty indicative of the level of reason being employed here though