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Not only did I read his post, but I understood it. Which is why I say it makes no sense in its current form. Find, in all that text, what happens when a (PC) pirate attacks another PC player.
Lets take a PC pirate called Alice, and Itani and some other player Virgil, a Serco.
Alice attacks Virgil. It seems logical that Alice looses rep with Serco, and its what Celebrim's missive indicates. However, Virgil has been a Bad Boy and has a negative PR with his own faction. In fact, Virgil is a pirate on his own kind. Now it no longer seems that Alice is a pirate - Alice is a pirate hunter, and should probably gain rep with Serco, for destroying a Serco ship.
Lets take a PC pirate called Alice, and Itani and some other player Virgil, a Serco.
Alice attacks Virgil. It seems logical that Alice looses rep with Serco, and its what Celebrim's missive indicates. However, Virgil has been a Bad Boy and has a negative PR with his own faction. In fact, Virgil is a pirate on his own kind. Now it no longer seems that Alice is a pirate - Alice is a pirate hunter, and should probably gain rep with Serco, for destroying a Serco ship.
No. Serco and Itani are at war, you see. So any Serco who kills an Itani gets a rep bonus, including Serco pirates. Meanwhile, any Itani who kills a Serco gets a rep bonus, including the Itani pirates. It doesn't matter whether they're pirates or not. All that matters is faction affiliation. Their occupations are irrelevant.
So if the faction reputations dominate, why bother with player reputations with factions at all? Having a good (or bad) rep with Itani means exactly what if it only matters that Itani is at war with Serco?
The only faction rep then that possibly matters is with your own faction, even then im not seeing how the mechanics of this system intends to solve the problem of a ship being hostile with its own faction. Serco Alice kills Serco Paul. Paul has a negative rep with Serco, but, because hes Serco, Alice looses rep with her own faction. "All that matters is faction affiliation". Now Alice has been "punished" for defending herself from a griefer.
The only faction rep then that possibly matters is with your own faction, even then im not seeing how the mechanics of this system intends to solve the problem of a ship being hostile with its own faction. Serco Alice kills Serco Paul. Paul has a negative rep with Serco, but, because hes Serco, Alice looses rep with her own faction. "All that matters is faction affiliation". Now Alice has been "punished" for defending herself from a griefer.
"Not only did I read his post, but I understood it."
And its clear you didn't.
"It seems logical that Alice looses rep with Serco, and its what Celebrim's missive indicates."
It's neither logical nor is that what my missive (missive?) indicates. If the Serco and Itani are on hostile relations, neither side loses reputation with the other for attacking them. They do however maybe gain reputation with thier own factions. (which is completely different). If Alice attacks Virgil (or any other Serco), the Serco do not penalize her. Afterall, they're at war. The Itani might reward her with a reputation bonus if she succeeds, depending on whether Virgil was about as experienced as Alice was.
The case you cite is rather bizarre, because its likely that if Virgil is pirating on Serco and has a huge negative reputation with them that he will have changed his faction affliation (for reasons to be seen latter). Another thing you miss is that its not only pirates that can get negative reputations. Virgil could simply be a thief, a smuggler, or some other sort of scoundrel. I don't see a pressing reason for the Serco to reward an Itani for killing one of thier own - even if they don't particularly like him.
Also you miss that its possible to have a high reputation with the Serco and be in a faction that they are hostile too. The situation would end up being quite complex depending on how well the NPC's were constructed. Most Serco NPC's (police bots and military ships) would be hostile to you. But many Serco NPC's would readily do business with you as well. Again, without also describing a detailed faction system, if Alice had a high reputation with the Serco and the Itani, ideally she could probably defect back and forth between them at some sort of reputation penalty each time she swapped sides; but even that's not completely essential.
"The only faction rep then that possibly matters is with your own faction."
That's frankly not true at all. Try being a trader with negative reputation in every faction but your own. All the trade routes available to you will be the short highly traveled low profit ones. Imagine for example (using the current universe) that you were an Itani trader with a negative reputation with respect to every system except 1 and 4. How much trading could you do? You'd be locked out everywhere and could just run red widgets and mining widgets between 1 and 4 (which often means a negative profit). Heck, imagine you were in the Itani Navy and stations 7, 11, and 5 where hostile to you. How easy would it be to assist in an attack on Serco or NT? Imagine a situation in which the bots in 17 or 18 let some traders pass unmolested, but all converge on some others. Imagine a situation in which you as an Itani could dock in sector 3 and buy things there. Do you see why you might care how other factions see you?
"Having a good (or bad) rep with Itani means exactly what if it only matters that Itani is at war with Serco?"
That depends entirely on how we construct missions and NPC's. It also depends somewhat on the factional system. It also depends a great deal on the story arc the designers choose to tell. There is no reason to assume that hostility between superpowers like the Itani and the Serco is the normal state of affairs. If we want the galaxy to always be convulsed by massive wars, it probably little matters what your reputation is. The US killed Admiral Yamamoto precisely because they respected him, not because they hated him. But its more likely that the Itani and the Serco are in a state of tense truce, and there would be alot of profit in having a good reputation with both sides.
"Serco Alice kills Serco Paul. Paul has a negative rep with Serco, but, because he's Serco, Alice looses rep with her own faction."
No. Because the lower your reputation with a faction, the more likely it is that the faction will be hostile to you, and thus will forgive any attack anyone makes against you (that's what hostile means). If you go into a system and its hostile, noone has to make any legal checks for attacking you. Why would a faction put out bounties on someone if it didn't want them collected? In fact, the system is even harsher than that. If the system isn't already hostile to Paul, and if Serco Paul has a sufficiently low reputation with the Serco, he will likely lose reputation if well liked Serco Alice attacks him because the Serco NPC's will generally assume that Paul's in the wrong. Serco Paul gets punished for defending himself from his attacker!
Negative reputation is a huge downward spiral that's hard to get out of, and Serco Paul's best bet is to leave the Serco as soon as possible. Buy joining a Pirate faction he gaurantees that the Serco will be hostile to him no matter what he does, but he doesn't keep losing reputation with the Serco just for fighting them (though he may acrue additional bounty, but even that's not actually essential, just cool).
So now you may be asking, well, if you can just join the Pirate faction and never lose reputation with most factions (because most factions are hostile to you), what's to stop pirates from griefing? Well, the answer is, if we construct the universe badly - nothing. We could construct a universe in chaos were joining the pirates has no real down side. But presumably the galaxy is not in chaos, and if you are in a Pirate faction the most settled, most prosperous regions with the good inexpensive weapons are virtually off limits to you. You also have to deal with the fact that you are in a faction with a nuetral (and sometimes even hostile) relationship with itself. If you want to grief mainstream traders, then you are going to have to fight or sneak your way through 4-5 sectors of hostile NPC defence bots, with no place to dock, using lower quality weapons that you paid higher prices for, and every Itani/Serco/or NT PKer looking at you as something they can grief and get away with it. And I haven't even gone into the faction system to explain why people would be strongly motivated to protect traders. Or you are going to have to grief the most experienced traders with the best weapons who have the experience and the equipment to make runs through lawless space and risk the PC pirates. And if you do that successfully, the profit should be enormous. But if you do that unsuccessfully, I don't want to hear you whining about how the Pirates killed you, because the Piratess are players too.
I have very little sympathy with people that want to stop Pirates. I don't want to stop PK's. PK's are fun. If we didn't have PK's, then why bother having a multiplayer game? There are so many things you can do better in a single player game. What I want to do is encourage faction cohesion, and to make truly anti-social activity just as hard to get away with in the virtual universe as its in the real one.
And its clear you didn't.
"It seems logical that Alice looses rep with Serco, and its what Celebrim's missive indicates."
It's neither logical nor is that what my missive (missive?) indicates. If the Serco and Itani are on hostile relations, neither side loses reputation with the other for attacking them. They do however maybe gain reputation with thier own factions. (which is completely different). If Alice attacks Virgil (or any other Serco), the Serco do not penalize her. Afterall, they're at war. The Itani might reward her with a reputation bonus if she succeeds, depending on whether Virgil was about as experienced as Alice was.
The case you cite is rather bizarre, because its likely that if Virgil is pirating on Serco and has a huge negative reputation with them that he will have changed his faction affliation (for reasons to be seen latter). Another thing you miss is that its not only pirates that can get negative reputations. Virgil could simply be a thief, a smuggler, or some other sort of scoundrel. I don't see a pressing reason for the Serco to reward an Itani for killing one of thier own - even if they don't particularly like him.
Also you miss that its possible to have a high reputation with the Serco and be in a faction that they are hostile too. The situation would end up being quite complex depending on how well the NPC's were constructed. Most Serco NPC's (police bots and military ships) would be hostile to you. But many Serco NPC's would readily do business with you as well. Again, without also describing a detailed faction system, if Alice had a high reputation with the Serco and the Itani, ideally she could probably defect back and forth between them at some sort of reputation penalty each time she swapped sides; but even that's not completely essential.
"The only faction rep then that possibly matters is with your own faction."
That's frankly not true at all. Try being a trader with negative reputation in every faction but your own. All the trade routes available to you will be the short highly traveled low profit ones. Imagine for example (using the current universe) that you were an Itani trader with a negative reputation with respect to every system except 1 and 4. How much trading could you do? You'd be locked out everywhere and could just run red widgets and mining widgets between 1 and 4 (which often means a negative profit). Heck, imagine you were in the Itani Navy and stations 7, 11, and 5 where hostile to you. How easy would it be to assist in an attack on Serco or NT? Imagine a situation in which the bots in 17 or 18 let some traders pass unmolested, but all converge on some others. Imagine a situation in which you as an Itani could dock in sector 3 and buy things there. Do you see why you might care how other factions see you?
"Having a good (or bad) rep with Itani means exactly what if it only matters that Itani is at war with Serco?"
That depends entirely on how we construct missions and NPC's. It also depends somewhat on the factional system. It also depends a great deal on the story arc the designers choose to tell. There is no reason to assume that hostility between superpowers like the Itani and the Serco is the normal state of affairs. If we want the galaxy to always be convulsed by massive wars, it probably little matters what your reputation is. The US killed Admiral Yamamoto precisely because they respected him, not because they hated him. But its more likely that the Itani and the Serco are in a state of tense truce, and there would be alot of profit in having a good reputation with both sides.
"Serco Alice kills Serco Paul. Paul has a negative rep with Serco, but, because he's Serco, Alice looses rep with her own faction."
No. Because the lower your reputation with a faction, the more likely it is that the faction will be hostile to you, and thus will forgive any attack anyone makes against you (that's what hostile means). If you go into a system and its hostile, noone has to make any legal checks for attacking you. Why would a faction put out bounties on someone if it didn't want them collected? In fact, the system is even harsher than that. If the system isn't already hostile to Paul, and if Serco Paul has a sufficiently low reputation with the Serco, he will likely lose reputation if well liked Serco Alice attacks him because the Serco NPC's will generally assume that Paul's in the wrong. Serco Paul gets punished for defending himself from his attacker!
Negative reputation is a huge downward spiral that's hard to get out of, and Serco Paul's best bet is to leave the Serco as soon as possible. Buy joining a Pirate faction he gaurantees that the Serco will be hostile to him no matter what he does, but he doesn't keep losing reputation with the Serco just for fighting them (though he may acrue additional bounty, but even that's not actually essential, just cool).
So now you may be asking, well, if you can just join the Pirate faction and never lose reputation with most factions (because most factions are hostile to you), what's to stop pirates from griefing? Well, the answer is, if we construct the universe badly - nothing. We could construct a universe in chaos were joining the pirates has no real down side. But presumably the galaxy is not in chaos, and if you are in a Pirate faction the most settled, most prosperous regions with the good inexpensive weapons are virtually off limits to you. You also have to deal with the fact that you are in a faction with a nuetral (and sometimes even hostile) relationship with itself. If you want to grief mainstream traders, then you are going to have to fight or sneak your way through 4-5 sectors of hostile NPC defence bots, with no place to dock, using lower quality weapons that you paid higher prices for, and every Itani/Serco/or NT PKer looking at you as something they can grief and get away with it. And I haven't even gone into the faction system to explain why people would be strongly motivated to protect traders. Or you are going to have to grief the most experienced traders with the best weapons who have the experience and the equipment to make runs through lawless space and risk the PC pirates. And if you do that successfully, the profit should be enormous. But if you do that unsuccessfully, I don't want to hear you whining about how the Pirates killed you, because the Piratess are players too.
I have very little sympathy with people that want to stop Pirates. I don't want to stop PK's. PK's are fun. If we didn't have PK's, then why bother having a multiplayer game? There are so many things you can do better in a single player game. What I want to do is encourage faction cohesion, and to make truly anti-social activity just as hard to get away with in the virtual universe as its in the real one.
I think baadf00d is wrestling with the issue that a reputation system can only dictate an NPC's behavior toward you, but not other players' actions.
This is true, but Magus brings up a good point that a reputation system *can* warn you about another player before they attack.
And of course Celebrim is right that reputation is hugely important with all factions because it would dictate everything from causing an NPC to attack on sight to widget prices in a station virtually everywhere you went.
This is true, but Magus brings up a good point that a reputation system *can* warn you about another player before they attack.
And of course Celebrim is right that reputation is hugely important with all factions because it would dictate everything from causing an NPC to attack on sight to widget prices in a station virtually everywhere you went.
"This is true, but Magus brings up a good point that a reputation system *can* warn you about another player before they attack."
-Of course. If I'm in a marauder and I wander into a sector, press "u," and see someone I know is a pirate, I either turn right back around. When we have a massive universe where we don't know who pirates and who doesn't a reputation indicator will tell you how much you can trust a person. If someone has a very low rep with your faction, you might want to avoid him or kill him, etc.
-Of course. If I'm in a marauder and I wander into a sector, press "u," and see someone I know is a pirate, I either turn right back around. When we have a massive universe where we don't know who pirates and who doesn't a reputation indicator will tell you how much you can trust a person. If someone has a very low rep with your faction, you might want to avoid him or kill him, etc.
*bump*