This is a request for devloper/guide assistance

I was participating in a CTC event on the borders of UIT space, waitng for someone to warp through, and a UIT approached me in a wraith mkIII, I checked his kills/levels and saw that he's got no kills, and has levels no higher than 4, so I regarded him as a fascinated newbie. out of the blue, he assaulted me with multiple rockets and brought my armor down to about 10%, I reacted by hailing him with a tri-neut stream which killed him quickly.
this resulted in my UIT standing to drop "enormously" from about +700 to -450 or so.
This is unacceptable, I worked very hard for that standing, and for it to be lost instantly because of some mischevious newbie is just insulting. my UIT standing was probably higher than his anyway.

I would really appreciate assistance from a guide or developer in getting my standing increased to at least remotely match where it was.

This is extremely frustrating because I used UIT space to buy capable ships to use in CTC and the like, and now I can't unless I spend more pointless hours improving standing again. I'm considering not renewing my subscription if I can't get a response from this. At least a word that the standing system will be improved would be better than nothing.

I don't mean to come off as an angry demanding customer. I believe fairness is on my side, and I trust that Guild can offer me a response.

[EDIT]

I would also like to call out some specifics. This event took place in Ukari L2, that's a UIT gaurded sector in grey space, and even after the event, no defense bots were deployed.

I strongly agree with this.

I'm sure a bunch of vets or others will post now, saying "it's your fault for killing him" but that's not right.

I understand the devs' delicate position on this issue, but Apex shouldn't be driven out of the game (as he's mentioned multiple times now he is about to) because of a headstrong new player.

Apex was at no fault, and to be penalized as strongly as he is is unfair.

Consider this your response. I'm at work now, so I can't log in and repair your standing from here, but I do see what went down, and will mention it.

This is a significant problem, and a very tricky balance to make. Not just your situation specifically, but the whole reputation system.

This has been a topic of much debate and controversy, and i dont think anyone, even the devs, is truly happy about it, however:

It's set up that way because the game engine has no way to really determine who is "at fault" for starting an attack. In a more traditional RPG where everything is based on a dice roll, the attempt to attack someone is obvious, and the "attacker" can be determined by who made the first "attack", because you HAVE to click on your target to attack it.

In vendetta, due to the way the game handles combat, a player could fly up to another player, shoot to intentionally miss, causing the target to think he/she was under attack and return fire. If the target hits the attacker, the game would then think that the target is at fault, giving the attacker a free kill. By the same token, it would be possible for someone to fly in front of a botter, making the botter look like the agressor.

Thus, at present the only reputation hit occurs at the point when you kill someone.

You, SHOULD have recieved a warning on your screen, notifying you of the fact that killing that player would result in a large standing drop. If you did, you either didn't see it or chose to ignore it.
(it appears in the chat log, i personally think it needs to flash across the screen right in the middle of the hud);
if you didnt,that is a bug, either way the reputation loss is kinda silly in this instance.

At present the only "defense" you have a against this particular situation is to just let the player kill you. If your reputation was as high as you say it was, HE would have been the one to take the reputation hit. Not a very pleasant solution, but it does work.

I hope the devs are planning to look at this in the future, but i dont know for sure.

I only recieved a message saying that the player was a lower level than I, and I would recieve a skill penalty for killing him/her.

ctishman: I appreciate your response, I hope I can help with these types of situations in anyway possible, but It's good to see that I got such a quick response.

hmmm

"-I only recieved a message saying that the player was a lower level than I, and I would recieve a skill penalty for killing him/her.-"

I wonder if that message overrides the standing warning. If it does that is DEFINITELY something that needs to change. Both should be displayed.

post a bug report so Ray will check the code to see what happened.

"You, SHOULD have recieved a warning on your screen, notifying you of the fact that killing that player would result in a large standing drop. If you did, you either didn't see it or chose to ignore it.
(it appears in the chat log, i personally think it needs to flash across the screen right in the middle of the hud);
if you didnt,that is a bug, either way the reputation loss is kinda silly in this instance."

i would like to say that -sometimes- that message doesn't appear in the mission tab. i find the behavior erratic at best with the warning message. also the messages (You are entering ---- space! Leave immeditaly!) do not even appear anymore.

it's a'bit strange the defbots didn't respond. usually when someone fires at you near a station the defbots go after them, and after you *IF* you fired back at the player. of course if you were 2k away from the station it won't respond accordingly. however from what i was hearing from you ingame, you were below that 2k mark.

Just be glad it was uit and not a nuetral faction, you can at least bot to get yours back, my tpg is forever ruined though.

Ou! Ou! I accidentally killed thirteen bots and sold some cargo and now I have two levels! This is unacceptable! I demand you fixit!

Seriously, stop fixing standings for people dumb enough to lose it. It's their mistake and they should learn from it.

We all know, that the factionsystem needs to be tweaked. We had this discussions over and over.

I want to say something else: Every active player should sometimes read the board. It helps you to get informed. And if the player has done it, he should know, what happens when he kills a player in monitored/guarded homespace.

I don't want to start a flame, but sorry, ctishman, offering public on the board to fix factionstanding opens doors and windows for all those, who lost standing ... <sarcasm on> oh, it was an accident ... i didn't mean to kill him ... and so on ... <sarcasm off>
It's a slap in the face of all those players, who work hard for their standings.

Imo it should not be, that guides can fix standings - a bit too much guidepower. Fixing standings should be something, only the devs can do.

Linda (-:

Damn, Serioulsy, i can do nothing about the loss of TPG standing i got from 1 kill (-611, im locked out forever)...

If i say im going to leave (im not) will i get my standing fixed too?

[Edit]

To clarify how i lost my standings... me at nyrius/verasi wh "/msg %target% Transfer 20000 credits to my account, and i may not turn your ship to scrap!." them, "Ok, bring it" turns round, we fight till they are around 10% and im stll 100%, so they hit turbo, i chase them to Dau, ok, my fault for not paying attention, but as he warped into k-10, my last fired shot blew him to peices, i lost standing, got locked out.. ..I actually thought it was a UIT station, and as i was -1000 at that time, i really didnt care, but had i realised it was a TPG station, i would have docked, and hit the sector chat =p

So you screwed up and got locked out... sounds right :P

Defending oneself and then getting a huge faction drop sucks... sounds wrong.

I'm not trying to demand that my faction standing be increased. I would have rather contacted a guide/dev more personally, but I have no idea how to do so.

I mostly just want to see that the devs do something about this drastic imperfection in the standing system.

here's what I offer for improvement: If a player deals more than 10% damage to another player outside of the no fire zone in a gaurded/monitored system, that player forfeits their protection untill they warp out of that sector. much like the temporary KOS for the gaurd bots, only the other way around. this way, one player can defend himself (or teach newbies not to screw around like that) and not suffer a huge standing hit.

in my case, I would have been better off letting the guy kill me, and that's not right, because newbies have much less to lose than players like me.

I'm not threatening to boycott or leave or whatever, but if I were newer in this game, I would probably have quit already, spending many hours on something only to have it wasted instantly is more than frustrating... It's like getting a save file deleted...

is it just me, or does the big problem presented the totality of the drop? how about a system where one gets a strict warning and you're required to do specific tasks to "show you realize the problem"? maybe some trade missions or something rather dull. :-)

after this, the event is permanently attached to your character, your standings dropped a fair bit (maybe 100-300 points), but as long as you behaved for a period of time (maybe a week or so), you'd not have any further actions pressed against you.

after the "warning" time has gone away, the entry is _still_ permanently following the character. repeat the action and you'll get a stricter warning, loose more faction points (300+) and your warning time would be longer.

add a third strike, and you're out. this would also help newbies who aren't sure about how the standing system actually works. heck, I don't know what penalties to expect for which action in a given sector. :-/

i dont mind if rules are not exactly logical, but there should be no question that they need to be clearly stated by the game. the greater the consequence, the more clearly the rule should be stated to the player.

an organization where rules are all obfuscated and hidden is called unfair. thats no fun. the point of sports (and games) is that the rules are pretty simple, everyone knows them, and everyone is equal before them... it makes for a nice change from real life.

thank god we at least have Guides to referee the galaxy.

P.s i know what i did was stoopid, and if anyone fixes it for me they will be shot at...

...on the other hand is it right i cannot fix it? i got locked out of UIT space, and itani(after lots of work) too, do you hear me complain? no! why, because if i take the time i can fix it...

[edit]

...Fixing standings for those who can do it themselfs is plain wrong, there should be a way however, for me to recover my TPG standing if i wanted to. Inc, ns1 ns2 ns3 ns4 and all the other corps.

I think Ananzi and Terjekv stated a good solution. the "one strike you're out" thing is a big problem.. by the time you learn from your mistake it's already too late. and even if those warnings are there, they're NOT easy to see, and when you've just been nearly killed, you tend not to pay much attention to the console.

[EDIT]

Another thing about faction standing. CTC should play at least a signifigant role in standing for serco/itani.. the UIT really have nothing to gain or lose from participating in CTC events. Stealing cargo should have a much bigger hit on standing than it does. Maybe more UIT would participate if they had something to gain from CTC. I mean, if a UIT player contributes enough to CTC to boost standing up to 800+ or so, shouldn't they get to reap the benefits of one or another side winning? correct me if i've made any errors in my assumptions

no, your assumptions are correct. IMO for each cargo you deliver your standing should fall with the opposite faction by twice what you gain with the faction you deliver to. Additionally Killing a convoy bot/transport should have a much more significant reputation hit than it does. at present i think its a 10 point hit, it should be at least 40.

<warning: The following paragraph, taken alone, may convey a different meaning from my post as a whole. Please read the WHOLE thing before responding.>
I was killing bots in Mexico when a big guy with a man-portable rocket launcher ran up and started firing at me! I pulled out my pistol and started chasing him, and just after he went into the border of the United States I managed to kill him, but now the United States has me "Shoot on Sight!" Will the President please fix my record, the cops did not yell at me to stop shooting him, I didn't know I was in US land!

There IS such a thing as too much realism.
/me successfully defended himself in UIT space once and went from +400 to -1000 in one swell foop, but you do not hear him complaining to anyone about it. well, asking people to fix it, anyway.
One should be able to take some sort of penalty, like a 1 million credit fine, which can increase their standing up to at least -600, at least for NT factions.
-:sigma.SB