First I just want to say this is from me as a player, me as a subscriber and me as what most would call a newbie.
Second I understand this is the direction the game will be going and nothing will change that.

Now that the warnings are out of the way :)

Personnally I think this will be a bad thing. On any of the sites that carry VO forums/threads you see the comment "I'm leaving because players sit outside the stations and gank the newbies" with the follow up to be "how can I get out and play if I keep dying". This must have been enough of a problem in the past that the Friendly Fire restriction was put into place.

Now the dev's have thought long and hard on the subject and have come up with a number of ways they hope will fix the problem and allow the removal of the restriction.

I don't think they'll work.

The newbie area. Fairly decent idea and it will really hinge on what level you kick them out into the actual universe at. Combat Lic 3? Too high. My son got it by doing days of mindless bot grinding. In more play time than him, I'm only at the 2.5/2.5/1/3/0 level. Atleast for both of us we can go do other things so the grind doesn't seem so bad. Now maybe getting xp will go quicker in the newbie zone, but for example purposes will say it's just like now. If so the zone will get old real fast.

FF punishments. Just the thought you're going to have to be on the look out for back stabbers is really depressing. Oh a friendly it's safe to leave the station, play in this sector whatever. Wait! who's shooting at me?!? OK so I'm now dead, he gets a temp ban to grey land. Maybe he sits there, maybe he dumps/ignores that toon and pulls up another to do it again, and again, and again. I see this one as just tearing down the national framework as you don't really know if he's friend or foe no matter what his nation listing/color is.

There are those who's whole concept of Pvp is ganking the newbies. They don't want standup fair fights, they want one's with a 99.9% win chance, anything else and they just run.

Suggestions that may provide a fix and can be added onto the direction the game is going.

- Introduce a 4th "player" nation; Pirate. You could either start as one, or when you're faction standing falls to a certain level auto become one, or if you're labeled a "murderer" and 'flee' from justice. You want a punishment for killing friendly players? Kick them out of their nation. Now that won't stop them from burning that toon and going with an alt, but what will? I don't remember seeing anything in Incarnates post concerning alt's or did I miss it?

- If the dev's can track the PLAYER'S, vice toon's play tread what about after X number of alt's getting the grey space trip ALL that players toon's auto become pirate at generation start. After all it's not the toon that's deciding to kill people.

- If someone is camping a station. Allow players to 'shuttle' to different stations and fly their ships they have stored there. If you know you can't play at that station, don't dump your sub and hate the game, go elsewhere and play.

Finally; decide if VO will be a nation vs nation Pvp game or a free for all. If nation vs. nation my above suggestions may help keep players around. If a free for all; then totally remove the whole nations concept since it won't mean anything and will be mis-leading.

Hm.

I remember when FF was still in-game (you'll want to say 'Friendly Fire Reintroduction', because FF is not possible now). It was taken out mostly because infiltration de-mining of an opposing team's flag occurred too often, if I recall correctly, not because there was intra-team griefing going on.

However, that was then, this is now. I know not if FF as it was then would be applicable today, but I trust the devs to be good game developers (so far, all signs point to yes on that). That is why I think FF can and should be re-implemented.

But that is only my opinion.

I don't believe re-implementing friendly fire will change very much.
Firstly, anyone who shoots at members of their own faction are already red on the radar due to no faction and can shoot at you freely.
Secondly, anyone who pays attention in-game knows roughly who all the pirates are. The same situation will play out for same-faction killers.
Thirdly, if you suck at PvP or are in a non-combat ship, and you aren't paranoid already, then you haven't been playing the game long enough.

I have a plugin that tells me how many players of each faction are in the sector and how many of them are human whenever I jump to a new sector. The same plugin also tells me when players jump in/out of a given sector. I made this plugin because I am paranoid. I don't trust anyone until I've had good dealings with them, and even then its always shaky.

If you're mining and aren't paying attention to anyone entering the sector or coming near you then you deserve to be blown up. With that said, I know lamers and those who reach for (and completely miss) the title of 'pirate' are annoying. The only way of dealing with them is to learn how to either A. avoid them or B. escape them. I argue that killing them won't do anything for yourself.

As for the alternative characters, they're generally thought of as being seperate entities, AFAIC. My MythOpus account is an Itani, hates Serco, and is now finding himself in Sedina having his fun taking shots at the PvP "ethics" of this game. However, I have another account who dabbles in PvP once in awhile and instead focusses on Trade and Mining. Other players have a variety of alts, all for different reasons. I don't think their entire account should be penalized if they so decide to slip on to the pirate side of things.

Camping stations is a practically useless tactic. Pirates would argue otherwise but they are clueless. For one if they hit you at all, they get attacked by the station guards and eventually the strike force. Even though this might not get rid of them, it WILL buy you some time if they end up jumping out.

Alternatively, just get a -fast- ship, set a nav points to a few nearby -empty- sectors, then launch > get to 3000m as fast as possible, then jump to the first sector on your nav list. Then keep jumping until you've lost the pirate.

The benefit of running this way is that the pirate has to manually make the jump coordinate himself by which point you're halfway done your jump. When you get to the new sector and jump out right away, they will be just done their jump into that sector. One more jump and you will have lost them.

I think the short answer to your main concern is: if another player kills you outside a certain station, he will only be able to do it a couple of times, after which he becomes hated by the nation who owns the respective station and he is hunted down by the station guards every time he enters the sector. so you'll generally be safe from such actions at least in monitored sectors..

Unless it's Corvus.

All true statements and while I am generally paranoid (more so when I first started playing but not so much now that I've gotten a feel for the population numbers), I'm still not convinced.

The point I think most glossed over was I'm not really talking about Pvp which I would have to define as us vs them / nation vs nation (including counting pirates as a nation).

I'm talking about ganking / back-stabbing etc... Using the game's mechanic's to appear friendly while they wait for the sole purpose of killing someone unexpected.

If I see a red and he kills me, that's the game, no surprise there. If I see a blue, then he's SUPPOSE TO BE ON MY SIDE and getting killed by one of them shouldn't be right.

- Ratonu: True. If nothing else the station guards will buy you some time. Will the AI be upgraded enough that it can out-fly or out-think a player though? There are ways around that one, the biggest being just how long will it take him to become hated that he gets a KoS order against him. For a newbie wanting to experience the acutal game vice the newbie zone, one death is probably ok, but nr. 2 will be too many. I talked about this in one of my other threads; a UIT player shot a missile at me, station guards chased him, he pops out via a jump hole, comes back station guards ignore him, he does the same thing to my son, just a repeat show, pops out, comes back. Now he didn't want to kill us or we'd have been dead, but it was fairly easy for him to out-think the guards. Also to go to the far extreme he could have come back with an alt for a fresh kill.

MythOpus - I don't think that's right, because just Friday night while playing in a sector with both my boys we had a situation where one of my son's was attacking a target behind me; atleast that's his story :), and he shot the snot out of me. No damage because of the FF rule, but his radar dot didn't change from blue to red. I've seen UIT's with Itani hated levels that didn't show as red. Heck I was chased by one. Maybe when they re-do the FF rule the radar dot's will change as has been suggested.

As to who the pirates are in game. How? Honestly how? I see anywhere from 50 to 95 players listed as online, yet you only hear 5 to 6 players talking on ch. 100. Now unless there's only 2 or 3 pirates in the game that I've picked out from the chatter.... I asked about reporting Ion Storms once on nations chat and was told I shouldn't do that since there were Itani pirates listening in. How about a news addon while you're in station that lists who's been involved in FF kill's so you can check it upon log in / station visits to get fresh info?

I honestly don't think, the players that are CURRENTLY in the game today are going to be the problem. The one's that used to do this or want to do this should have left a long time ago since they've been blocked from playing their version of Pvp.

But ..... what of the new arrivals coming in game, because that's what the dev's and other players want ... more people online at any one time. More action, BS with more than 1 player etc... etc... Someone said there's around 1000 current sub's, but where are they when we only see 50 - 95 players online at anyone time? And I'm wondering about some of those - O'Malley seems to be on 24 hours a day, but the toon just sits in the same station day in and day out? Strange way of playing.

To use 2 examples from both ends of the picture.
SWG back in the pre-cu hey day. You could take faction missions, go 2000-3000m from a city (back in the days when you had to walk everywhere. And yes it was uphill both ways and in 6 ft. deep snow, even on Tat. :) ) Kill Imp/Reb NPC's and get your Temp. Enemy Faction flag and be safe until it wore off, because you never ran into any Pvp hunt groups out there (I did only once in all the time from launch to when the CU went in). Now if you went back to a city with your TEF on it was another story. Basically lots of open spaces to hide in.

Other extreme, PoTBS. Red zones of death around the ports newbie's had to go to/from and gank squads just waiting to strike. And anytime the dev's tried to come up with ways to fix it, you'd hear players complaining that they were restricting their way to Pvp. Didn't matter if it wasn't a very supported style, it was THIER's.

I know the dev's here are shooting for a middle ground and I hope they find it.

Removal of FF is tightly linked with the new Faction System.
Imho removal of FF will make VO PvP more realistic.
There will be no more manic rocket showers while ganking enemy pilot because rocketeers will kill more of their teammates then their enemies. Same with noob turret fire. Shooting from noob turret behind your teammate while trying to kill enemy will result in your teammate running into your line of fire and dying.
Players will just have to adapt to this new combat reality and be more careful with their usual energy and rocket spamming.
Group fights will become immensely more interesting.

New Faction System will take care of nation space offenders quickly and allow far better immersion into VO universe.
Depending on how far developers are ready to go with new Faction changes (I hope they will go very far) it will become impossible to have multiple POS or admired standing with any nation that is not your own and, I also hope, nation ships availability will be restricted to respective nation pilots too
Of course there are lamers that are still exploiting current faction system and stocking hundreds of other nation ships to use them when new Faction System gets implemented.
I hope devs are prepared for them and will make their exploiting futile by implementing "nation key" for unlocking ships anywhere in the universe.
Only thing exploiters will be able to do is sell their precious stocks of 100s of proms, valks, etc.

To my knowledge, the developers or indeed, Incarnate, said (repeatedly) that PvP should theoretically be possible anywhere, with varying degrees of difficulty. And basically, even if it's a griefing vet against a new player, it's still PvP. I see your point, but I think it's wrong. Having a FF ban in place obviously did not stop griefers from doing their stuff. And I do not think that a removal of that ban will encourage it to a great degree. It just means you have to watch where your shots go (a valuable lesson for RL, too, btw) and watch who's around you.

As for what should and what shouldn't be right... being back-stabbed is actually very interesting from a RP point of view.

And as for radar blip coloring... yeah. That could use a serious revamp. But if I remember correctly, that's part of the removal process of the same-nation magic shield. And there's already plug-ins that let you modify radar blip colors.

Just the thought you're going to have to be on the look out for back stabbers is really depressing.

Then you're in the wrong game. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

"Then you're in the wrong game. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out."

LOL! Hey Doc, what? Do you have that phrase key-bound in your computer?

Now I don't know if Dr. Lecter is a gank supporter or not, but if he is and is just waiting for the removal so he can play his version of Pvp, then THAT's the kind of attitude (and post) that will drive new players away.

Fraticide probably wasn't the right term to use and I've edited that post, as I actually support that part of the FF issue. You shouldn't just hose the sky, hitting one and all without anything happening. In that way I really liked Freelancer and the demo of the SW Naboo space game. You got a warning from the other 'pilot' and if it happened 1 or 2 more times all the friendlies became ex-friends and turned red on you.

Toshiro - "And basically, even if it's a griefing vet against a new player, it's still PvP"

A form of, but let's say the vet and newbie have grouped up (either official group or just together) because the vet tell's him he'll help him out leveling and watch his back in case the bot's get too much or an enemy player shows up. They go off to an out of the way sector and once there the vet back shoots the guy laughingly texting "that will teach you to trust people". How will that kind of Pvp and actions help the game?

"being back-stabbed is actually very interesting from a RP point of view."

I'll agree with that, if it's done in an RP manner. With my above example, that probably wouldn't be.

Either way, something should be put out there in a fairly permenant basis that this toon is a murderer.

Yes there are ways to exploit any fix put in place, that's why I said I hope the Dev's find a good middle ground.

Also once again, I don't think these kinds of actions will be from the current player base, but from those coming into the game with the sole hope to grief or gank and there are those types out there that just go from game to game.

Even a newbie is born Admired to its nation.

If anyone kill two Admired+ players (any players ever, not YOU twice) in according nation space, he will be set KOS permanently.

KOS player for a nation will be attacked by station guards in a station sector and by Arena Seekers and Strike Forces in ANY nation monitored sector. Moreover, border sectors have turrets as well as station sectors in capital systems.

It is a whole different story if you got killed in the front of a station owned by OTHER faction you are not Admired for. There is only TMP KOS set and a re-jump clears it. Solution: Be prepared fight and die or do not go there because it is dangerous for you. (Remember, there are non UIT stations INSIDE of UIT space! I bet this made it.)

I cannot see any problem here. It seems to me that the attacker didn't out-think the guards but you. You probably do not understand the game metrics enough or, at least, less than that attacker.

Nebless is writing from the viewpoint of a new player so I think his observations should be taken seriously; especially regarding how they impact a new player's perception of the game, whether justified or not, as they learn the ropes. While veterans form the body of an MMORPG, new players are its lifeblood and keep the game vital and growing. Without them, VO grows increasingly stale and driven by inertia which leads to a game catering to a few at the expense of the game itself. While not in favor of creating any safe haven, I do think we need to insure that newbies are safe enough from other players to learn to defend themselves in relative security until they feel they are ready to take on more themselves.

However, I don't think the removal of the Friendly Fire restriction will lead to any more griefing than there is now and the new Faction system, which is partially in place, should, in the end, lead to Nation space being safer but with a more deadly environment as you get further away from the capital systems as habitual criminals are exiled to Grey. While nowhere will be absolutely safe, the tiered defenses will serve to keep newbies relatively safe until they are ready to venture beyond their starting system. Even if griefers get past all the defenses, the new system will eventually kick them out of Nation space and make them KOS, as has been said, which will make identifying them easier after.

If the radar's IFF system is changed along with the Faction system and takes this change of status into account (native KOS status identifying the pilot as a known criminal) then the "green-on-green" scenario which seems to be Nebless' primary concern should be mostly addressed.

Thank you Daare, that's what I've been trying to get across. Maybe I should have started with "Playing Devil's Adovate" or something.

Incarnate in his post talked about setting up a tutorial zone which will be the newbie safe area, hitting the right balance of too short / too long will be a problem in itself.

Expanding the guarded space to include all the sectors in a capitol's system will be his second layer and as long as there's things to do in that system it should give the newbie's more time to learn and grow.

I also think the HUD change and Itani/Seco change will help in those areas. Having a Seco player trading in an Itani station when they're at war just shouldn't be.

Infinitis -

"If anyone kill two Admired+ players (any players ever, not YOU twice) in according nation space, he will be set KOS permanently."

From reading and now re-reading the dev post I don't think this will be the way it goes. Incarnate talks about a 2 week KoS order and while he does say it will also effect their nation status, until farther down the line we probably won't be able to translate that into a kill X number to go to perma-KoS, and even then with the right grinding they'll be able to bring their standing's back up prior to it going perma-KoS. I'm thinking a yo-yo effect on standings. Harder to get the more you kill, but not impossible.

"It seems to me that the attacker didn't out-think the guards but you. You probably do not understand the game metrics enough or, at least, less than that attacker."

He didn't WANT to kill us, when I came in sector and saw he was UIT I did a toon check on him and saw that he was respected for Itani which said to me "I shouldn't shoot him and he probably won't lob anything at me", looking back I'd say his missile shots were just to scare us away so he could go after the Enemy player hiding in the station which we wanted to attack (his being there first may have had something to do with it) or he was there as the guys grey space escort. Either way he got his point across. I used it as an example concerning the AI's level of expertise since he could have killed me, then ducked out, came back and killed my son long before the AI could have got him.

And I will be the first to admit I don't understand all the game metrics.

There are definitely significant challenges to removing FF. This is why practically every other major game keeps it "on" (of the ones that even allow non-consensual PvP in the first place). The extent of the challenges are why we also still have it, for the moment, and why it's taking some time to change.

As I see it, there are two major regions of play that are problematic:

1) People who gank players of their own nation, in nation space. Some of this will be accidental (Kill Forgiveness), some of it will be intentional but not very well understood.. new players shooting at the first thing that moves (non-PvP newbie sectors, gradually introducing them to the concept.. to hopefully minimize the issue). The worst, however, will be those who truly understand what they're doing, and do it anyway. For this last group, I intended the use of a "strikes system".. I'm not sure how many strikes, but the Temp KoS system and player-banishment would be used to move them to Grayspace and make them unwanted in their own nation territory for increasing lengths of time (a week, a few weeks, a month). After a certain number of incursions (2? 3?) it could be semi-permanent. After the very first issue, they will no longer appear green on the radar. Plus, with the increases in individual station defenses, I don't foresee station camping as being quite so.. common as it can be now. There is also the prospect of introducing a concept of "powering down" weapons, and requiring this for entry into major nation NFZs.

2) Players who subvert the above system via the creation of new characters. To mitigate this, the new-character process is going to be lengthened a bit, with some time required in the no-PvP newbie sectors or stuck with training weapons (perhaps an hour or two), preventing people from just trivially deleting-and-creating characters to gank people over and over again in Capitol systems. However, generation of new characters will still be a problem, for anyone who is truly ganking-happy. It may be that we will have to eventually propagate some kind of team-killer status through to the actual player account, requiring that all new characters made on the account for a given unit time (say, the time remaining in the worst-character banishment) only be "Unaligned" characters from Corvus. This is problematic, as it seriously messes with a person's ability to make normal alts (at least for a period of time) and I dislike doing anything account-wide, but that or some other solution may prove to be a necessity for those who create more than X number of characters in Y unit time that prove to be actively banished for team-killing.

Clearly, there are a lot of "balance" issues, in terms of making sure new players are educated before they gain the ability to kill other players, and so on. This will require testing. At the very least, yes, we are looking at the newbie sectors where "vet" players will not be allowed, and all newbies will have Training weapons. However, the full three-stage newbie process (sector, system, nation) includes 3 specific licenses before they're allowed out of each respective region. It is possible to keep them on Training weapons even at the System level.. it leaves them defenseless against other players (but they practically would be anyway, against an experienced vet, just in terms of combat skill), but only within Nation Capitols that are and would be the "safest" areas we have. Of course, we still don't want being a newbie to be too bad, but for the most part, newbies really aren't ready for PvP (beyond training weapons) for at least a few levels anyway.

Truthfully, I don't know how it will all shake out. But via a combination of fixes to our existing faction system, changes to the radar and awareness of nearby "bad people" (potentially using a set of enhanced sound effects with the Prox Warning and updated radar), updates to newbie handling to inform them of the issues, and repercussions to those who are violent against people of their own nation.. there should be some balance that is reasonable.

If things truly prove impossible to balance, then we may have to look at scenarios like making FF region-specific (Nation space only, for instance). But, for the moment, we still have a lot of baseline work to do.. like reworking some of the ad-hoc strangeness in our faction rules, adding the newbie zones and so on. We're aiming to try it with "full exposure" and I think there's a decent chance that it will prove workable.

Inc, have my babies.

As of deleting and recreating characters over and over again ...
After deleting a char, the particular free slot would become available after some time, e.g. 24h.

Thank You Incarnate. It's always nice to see the Dev's are 1 step ahead of us players.

Inc, since your brought it up, I am in favor of some sort of system of "powering down" weapons. The variation I like is the one requiring a detectable warm-up period. Along those lines, a warning when being targeted by another pilot with weapons armed or warming-up (probably not an auditory one but perhaps something visual in the HUD) would be welcome as well.

There are always going to be players who will intentionally and maliciously hunt newbs as they leave the dock for the first time. If measures are put in-place to stop that account from behaving so, these players will create a new account in order to bypass that restriction.

So, any system of newb-killing punishment must be tied to the player via their email address, credit card number, or IP address. (As in, if ANY of those match, the restrictions are put in place.)
This would force the player to use a new email, a new credit card account, and obtain a new IP every time if they were REALLY intent on being as much of an ass as possible. Every bit of deterrent helps.

Actually, it might be more fun to just disable all of the offender's chat capabilities (both send & receive, all channels, including help, nation, bar chat, messages, everything) - I have a theory that those who do this do it solely for the reaction that they get from the newbs. Take that away, and there's no reason for them to do it.

Lengthening the new-character creation process will definitely help - it's annoying enough already for me, and the only reason I make new characters is to have a character like "President McCain" or "Britney."

And I agree with Infinitis on the 24 hour "wait" period from when you delete a character slot until you can fill that spot with someone else.

And Daare's "target warning" is a good idea as well. What fighter-pilot doesn't know the "radar lock" signal that tells them to "Do a Barrel Roll!"

The sooner FF is removed the better the game will be!