Instead of the quantitative system in place, I'd like to propose a more qualitative system.

My rationale is as follows.. doing a charinfo on my newest alt reveals +-30 pks. This is a gross disguise, which does newer players who are trying to gauge me no favors whatsoever. Anyone and everyone can hide behind a new pilot mask. On the other end of the scale is the 1000+ pk player who plays infrequently, really isn't very violent, but has simply been playing so long that it looks intimidating.

The proposal.. this is a twofold solution. Similar to veteran 25, 100, 500, make this badge read Formidable, Aggressive, or Vicious. A pilot will only have one at a time. These three designations should correspond to the average number of pks per month over the three most active months of play. An average of three averages, so to speak. It sounds complicated, but in practice it would not be. For the second part of this change, the aggression badge needs to be made account-wide like the alpha/beta badges. The extra badge I propose does not replace the pk badges which should still be earned on a per-pilot basis.

This accomplishes three things.. first, anyone checking charinfo will have a clear idea of how capable of killing any given acquaintance is, second, the self-defense combat players receive no bad rep, and third, the truly dangerous appear as such even under new names/pilots.

Where should we set the levels? I'll post here my own estimated numbers, and I encourage the rest of you to do the same, so we can get an idea of what is truly aggressive and what is not.

In my first two months playing, I earned the 25 pk badge. Two months later I had the hundred, and in the past six weeks (if I wasn't split on four pilots) I would have earned the 500. Those of you who fight me shall be the judges of whether I am any good or not, but by the numbers I suspect I'm at the 'Aggressive' designation, with over a hundred kills a month since I started actively seeking combat.

New players think I'm some sort of expert, while vets like Niki view me a mild challenge at best. He'd be a possible model for Vicious, by the way. Formidable would be for someone who mostly wins, but doesn't seek combat. I don't have a number estimate for either of these two, but it can be set somewhere and adjusted when we get a better idea- it would only be one line of code. Percentile wise, I think Vicious would be the top 10%, Aggressive the next 25%, and Formidable the 25% after that. This leaves the bottom 40% of players with no aggression badge. Again, these numbers are subject to change, I just need some feedback from everyone.

Nice

Needs a on/off switch. If I wanted to start fresh, I wouldn't want everyone to know who I am.

That is exactly what I am trying to prevent, zamzx. If you want your aggression level lower, you need to play peacefully, thereby justifiably lowering your average. Think of it as balancing out the books- if you spend more time mining than killing your average will be lower by definition. If you spend more time killing than you do anything else, those around you have a right to be warned.

There can be no 'magic zero button' or the purpose is defeated.

Also, a 'fresh' character will still lack the 25/100/500 badges. That is enough to preserve the personality of a separate character/pilot while still giving those around you fair warning of the gamer behind the curtain.

Dude, that defeats the entire purpose of roleplay.

I have different alts. Some of them are vicious killers, others peaceful explorers. If you put a "Killer" tag on my peaceful explorer, he suddenly ceases to be that. Many people play that way. Reputation speaks for iself; if someone has a low-level alt and is already getting PKs, it's obvious they're not really a newbie, and news gets around.

I'm with Cunjo on this one.

If you know how to read our current stat system, you can already tell too much about a player.

I am all for something that identifies the personality, reputation, and tendencies of the alt. on a per alt basis.

I would rather see stats for types of ships killed, so when i see a char that has 100pks, and 98 of them are moths, i can just shoot him.

How about a badge that reads "Mostly Harmless" for anybody that are pacifists..Like no kills for two months;)

Hortan, Extremely Harmless

I think it's a good general idea, but being account wide is a problem. I agree with cunjo, it should be per alt, and it should also probably have more variations as well. Depending on how 'good' they are in respect to their own Nation, they can be given one name, and how many kills per month, another name.

So a really bad ass pirate would be something like : " the Vicious Murderer _______"

Instead of said badge, why not have a 'Danger Level Estimate' service provided by nations?

In-game, you bring up your PDA, and in a tab, you will be able to input any given player name (provided it exists), and automatically, the three Nations will provide statistics comprised of, but not limited to:

a) # of deaths of the individual by the hands of players from [nation]

b) # of deaths of players from [nation] by the hands of the individual

c) same as a, but with NPC

d) same as b, but with NPC

with the respective totals as well as numbers using the averaging process suggested by Aramarth only character-wide, not account-wide. This could also be directly incorporated to the target info tab, but I fear it would overload the available screen space.

*supporting Cunjo as well*

Alts need to be completely separate, and know only if the player wants others to know that they are an alt.

I have a character that has zero kills. Zero. And no combat levels. I think it'd be highly amusing if they were labelled "VIcious killer" or even "Formidable" XD

LMAO Moldy.

I like this idea, but dislike anything that spans over different characters. I'm actually in favor of making the alpha & beta badges optional to display.

There ought to be some kind of "amalgamated player rating" that is visible online by viewing your own profile, and you can choose to make this public or not. So if your ego demands to be fed, you can make your account history PK public if you like.

I like toshiro's idea of a danger level estimate. A rating should come up right next to that player's name when you target them. Whether that's a numeric ranking from like 0 to 100 or a named ranking system would be fine.

Having different ratings for different nations would be fun as well. For example, to Itani one character would be a "Patriotic Warrior" or whatnot, and to Serco it would be "Bloodthirsty Baby-Killer." Etc. If this rating could be made to work hand-in-hand with the new faction system, that would be kinda neat.

*sigh* fine, enjoy being lied to by one another's alts. I guess I'm just too honest about mine, I'm apparently wrong.

You just seem to refuse the possibility of roleplaying that's all. There is a reason for alts, and roleplaying is a major one.

some players are role locked. every character they make ends up in the same role. however, they also end up with the same stats, so it doesn't take long to figure out "what" they are, even if you don't know "who" they are. they really just can not help themselves. they just don't know any other way. and your not fixing anything here. they already end up with the same old stats. your just telling us again, what they are already going to tell us.

but not every player is role locked. some player have character with wildly divergent stats, and justifiably so. they actually play that character differently. but here is where you really crippled the player. your idea would basically force him to be role locked. no matter how differently he plays his alts, your going to group them all together, and force the player to play them all the same.

you may be a role locked player, but not every one else is. your not really fixing anything, and even worse, you are breaking something for the rest of.

look at a characters stats? you really can't tell "what" that character is, based on the currently available stats?

I wouldn't mind the Pk tags.

again, the on/off switch would be nice, but when it comes down to it, they can always check your info.

That was one of the nifty things with EV, the combat ratings

I find this suggestion very strange.
How can you estimate if someone you encounter is potentially dangerous *in the real universe*.
If its a military situation/conflict you can judge by your opponents ship, weapons, military insignia and finally by his combat skill and tactics.
There is no way to be sure he is a murderous raving lunatic that will destroy you in 5 secs.
The whole concept of char info in VO that can be seen by anyone is unrealistic and redundant RP wise. How can you get all the intel on an specific Itani combat pilot if you are a regular Serco pilot? How can you know how many fights he won and pilots killed? How can you possibly know his standing with other nations/factions. Thats plain stupid.

The only normal thing would be for all char info to be hidden and known only to pilots respective nation/military/guild.
What you can see when you target your enemy is his call-sign, guild insignia and the ship he is in.

Edit: If I want to RP differently with some of my chars i do not want all of them to be labelled *vicious*. In fact, I do not want anyone to know anything about my RP chars except my nation/guildmates. End of story.

I don't want my peaceful trader/miner alt to be treated/perceived the same way as Kragmier. He doesn't treat/perceive others the same as Kragmier would.

Alts should be alts, not aliases.

Aramarth said: *sigh* fine, enjoy being lied to by one another's alts. I guess I'm just too honest about mine, I'm apparently wrong.

I'm with you in spirit, Aramarth. But I've learned that the playerbase likes their alt-games too much to give it up.

I'm honest about my alts as well. After playing for a while and stressing over who each other's alts really were, I came to a conclusion that it didn't matter. Now I treat each alt as a separate person, even if I know otherwise. Or I try to, anyway. It helps keep me honest. Oh, sure, every so often I'll create a throwaway alt like "Rudy Giuliani" or "Duck Rapist" or "a1k0n", but the only two characters that I've ever done anything on were LeberMac, Lexicon, and then LeberMac again.

One of the things that I dislike about this game is the ability to have up to 6 different characters who are used as spies or whatnot for the "main" alt. Some people get into it, they love the "game within the game", but not me so much.

However, when I *do* know things about people's alternate identities, I keep it to myself.

Would be nice to have ratings like in EV:Nova, but alt-specific and not cross-character.

LeberMac said: "Would be nice to have ratings like in EV:Nova, but alt-specific and not cross-character."

Indeed. This is almost the exact same thing I have in mind. EVN just puts it in nice words instead of numbers, which would be fine by me.