Rules Change Discussion 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4

[Lonewolf87]

i would like to give my 2 sence for the new rules since i myself am fearily new i think 7 or 8 weeks now at most i have run into severel ocasion where i was killet just cuz i was mineing for a specific faktion (not gonna name it here but i bet most know the faktion thats meant here anyway) if u die 5 times to the same player while justm ineing in the same area evry hours just fo the fun for him is anyoing cuz i cant go back there to try again for another hour since pvp dead and once u try he just logs back in on tiem to kill u again that is something that shoult be stopt.

i also learn about the rp part and try to get into it but in all honersty with all the stuff happening and all the lore that was made for discovery it will take alot of time for ppl to get inti all the right parts and the way to behave . i feel that myself when going out and try to rp abit in game i also am not native with english and my spelling in generell is shit by most standarts tho i try but in situation where ppl just come and shoot without even saying anyhting while i typ also gets anyoing also happend severel times latly again for the ppl that so love PVP why dont there meat up in coon for PVP turnerments like once evry 2 days and the winner gets a price for winning or something liek that i think that owuld make the rp player more happy than looking over the playerlist and try to avoit ppl at all cost

I understand that ppl might dilike the idea but i hope evryone understands thats just 1 opinion my opinion and maybe others are totaly agaisnt it but the gerell thought shoult be that this ia a game tha ppl play to have fun and if the try hart pvper come at u while u rp somewhere with anoither group (best exemple is the aktual vent with the corsairs outcast and GC and giving away the reepktive comodeties like rum and such ) and suddenly u get shoot at by ppl while u do the event task screenshooting cargo the chat etc by the time u responnt u are usualy already dead .

also to the transport protektion changes the rule with hte evrything below 3600 cargo is combat worthy is not true what does a cargo ship do vs a snup or a gunboat with the right weapons nothing u cant escape and for sure u cant win atleast i cant some ships coult like exemple the raba but that is a special case pick the hsips out that are such a special case and make an exeption list for these but dont take it out on evry transport out there some transport have problems findign a transport that there id is even alowet to fly in the first place since not evry faktion can fly 5ker exemple hogosha u limit them even more now and this is in my eye counter produktive

final word i knwo this looks liek a complaint list isnt supost to be one just maybe this gets ppl to think about what shoult be done and what shoult not be done where all only human arent we

[Luke.]

I do think if there's going to be any further change, to be a tightening up of the rule that dictates the minimum interaction needed though. If somebody responds to a /1 in a non-hostile fashion or seems open to an actual conversation, then I think this should be a signal that you may not immediately open fire following the /2. Personally. Make people entertain the idea of a compromise or de-escalation and encourage monetary loss (which again, would be the potentially the same cost or even more than being blown up by that point. Funny how that works). If the defendant is unwilling, then free game. Food for thought.

Again I think the problem comes down to the ominous 2.1 rule, rather than transport being delegated as combat ships. I'll quote my first idea above to have it in the same place.

I think it is fine for risk to be associated with trading. Stated that in my earlier post, especially if you're trading goods outlawed by surrounding factions or travelling through hostile space. Expecting to be left alone or kindness to come your way is...delusional, to be blunt.

However it is not fine to allow people to not state any demands or converse in any even remotely meaningful way before opening fire. Again I don't think PvP-exclusive players will do this, since fighting in or against a transport isn't particularly engaging anyway, but the root problem is the minimum requirement. Another idea could be to have a separate rule regarding traders to any other scenario. Require proper RP to be present toward traders for the sake of good piracy-related interaction (and possible combat upon refusal or pugnacious behaviour), but leave it as it is toward other combat-capable ship classes that are obviously not trading.

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[Eternal.Journey]

Okay. Going to start this Post 2 with a Positive for you, so that you know you’ve actually done one bit of clarification right:

1.1.2 - PVP Sportsmanship concerning Stakes
Unless there are tangible stakes (monetary, material, and/or story consequences) to be gained or lost, players will prioritize fairplay and mutual enjoyment of combat where possible.

EX1: A spontaneous Corsair raid into Omicron Alpha against an Outcast home defense fleet, where only PVP deaths are at stake - sportsmanship applies.

EX2: A pirate enforcing a demand of a trader with valuable cargo, or any other ship carrying unmounted valuable equipment that can be taken - there's enough at stake to justify waiving sportsmanship on both the attackers and defenders.

EX3: A POB siege - while only the defenders stand to actually lose the POB, there's enough at stake to justify waiving sportsmanship on both the attackers and defenders.

In summary - Don’t be a dick unless there’s a good reason both in and out of roleplay. Where possible, treat other players with respect when there’s no reason not to, and others will show you the same.

You’ve done good here. Highlighting that outside of most anything arranged by staff, by siege or by denying a piracy attempt (issues with this but they’re covered in other posts and here) as no longer being “gank reportable” is good. However, i do feel that even herethere should be fairplay considerations. They shouldn’t be given as stomps, because even the people who stomp go “yeah, that wasn’t that fun tbh”. Still, the clarification is good, and is well recieved, i think by most everyone as a “this is what’s okay and not okay”. Stops the bullshit “we have to worry about a report for using excess force.

HOWEVER. What I would like to point out is that. As far as “excessive force” goes. Seeing as 3 to 1 odds of late have been ruled as fair, what the fuck is the general “its a gank” to “its not a gank” boundary?

I’ve asked and spoken to people about this stuff, pleaded for change and reported this shit a few times. Yet, I’ve been told its “fine” because of various dubious reasons. Where is the line? Does that line change based on who is involved, and do people who have simply done enough to get by get rated higher skill than they actually are?

Okay, yeah. Kinda a “yeah heres a positive, but also a negative”. I promise that in this post, from now on, the content is negative on the rule change proposal.

2.2 - If you are killed or dock during a hostile player encounter, you must not re-enter the system or attack anyone involved in the encounter for 1 hour. Trade Ships docking during a hostile player encounter are not considered to have been "killed".

So, not only are you stripping them of the /1 /2 protection, thats been laid on alot since its been brought up. But you’re also making them pvpdead for an hour. So. What’s the logic behind doing this to the less pvp orientated people? Im seeing a very lopsided removal of protection across the board for anyone running a transport ship and not alot of catering to people who are newer and already at a deficit.

Balance changes: Benefit new players for combat, in the sense that it helps them hit.
Rule changes: strips 90% of transports to combat ship status, making them exposed to pvp forcibly.

Considering we are sposed to be encouraging RP more… it seems the opposite is happening. I am not convinced that the vague “1.0/1.1 clarification will at all help alleviate the issues in the transports to combat ships change. We had this issue before, didn’t we? Where staff decided that ganking was subjective to reporting and staff discretion based on what they think is skill and not skill bla bla bla. Ring any bells to you, Community Warning? The numerous reports of some groups being very negligent of fairplay and being allowed because staff felt it was fair in their eyes, even when the community, and the ones who committed the act admitted it was wrong to have done? No… why oh why would we remember that?

EX1: Traders that are faced with an unfavorable situation cannot just stop and go 'fine just kill me' as if they will just respawn.

Lol. No need to ask the pirate to kill them anymore. They already can now you turned the most common transports into combat ships.

Pirate ID: - can attack combat ships outside of House Space

Thank you for a new terrorist ID to piss off the rest of the traders who actually would give an interaction if they could. If this change goes through you can /1, /2 and completely the fuck ignore any pleas for mercy. Lol. Good job on encouraging roleplay. And as for “ah but that’s 1.0” - No. It isn’t. It is within the rules of ID, the server and the “spirit of fairplay”, according to the current clarifications. It’s not malicious towards a specific person, it isn’t a hunting one player down across many different characters. Alls it’ll be is your lax judgment enabling shitty interactions for people who aren’t pvp focused, pitting them against people who want the fight.

Players should act as their roleplay identity dictates - there are few, if any, roles that allow for a murder-hobo mentality. Pirates profit little from murdering people, and they’re in it for the profit. Care should be taken to reflect the greediness for material gain over simple bluemsg seeking behavior.

As I stated before, this above is of little relevance to some character that is an established “dick” and “hates everyone equally”. I can think of a multitude of ways to enable this roleplay, some involving “alien mind control” or “Blackmail”, or “loving the thrill of taking lives”, or wants to “prove they’re hard to an unlawful gang”, or a great many other things. Okay, say you find a way to argue that you can shut literally all of these down.

There are 39 IDs with the line “can attack combat ships”. I would include “can attack any ship ID’s too but they already can blow the fuck outta transports, and some already do. Some of these 39 are Official Factions and they’re likelier to be trusted. But you have a good portion of Independent IDs that have varying abilities to mass murder any and all ex-transports. And most all of them can reason within roleplay why they’d kill em.

Intels: “No Witnesses.”
Corsairs: “The Imperio must have all of your stuff!”
Outcasts: “You are not an Orange Dream enjoyer. You die.”
Etc etc. you get the point.

Stop fucking over the little people, and work towards looking after the people who do actually give roleplay. This is the opposite of it, ive seen and had decent pirate-trader interactions over the months. Now we are looking at removing all that for the sake of “Haste and Co. can PvP in transports, so everyone is capable of it” mentality. It wouldn’t be so bad if PvPing in transports was a widely done and accepted thing, and made frequent appearances in fleet battles and the like. But they don’t. Why is this? Why don’t said people who are saying these ships are combat capable use them for combat?

Switch off your PvP Balance Brains for just a moment, and consider the Roleplay Brains side. we have lost enough newer/returning players to bad decisions, let’s not make even more and dissuade even long-standing vets from playing the game.

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[EisenSeele]

With regards to concerns about /1/2, we're communicating our intention to enforce the "2.1 - You must provide sufficient roleplay before attacking another player" in the context of what makes sense for the role - attacks must have a justification that is roleplayed out and makes sense. A 3.6k transport that's ferrying cargo is no longer balanced in the same view as a 5k transport - but it still makes no sense for a pirate to just kill it without any motive for profit or some other externality that would compel them to exercise violence. If we find someone is needlessly murderhoboting with poor quality roleplay, despite the fact that we have publically made it known that such things are unacceptable, they will be punished.

On this roleplay server, we have a sandbox in which players have the freedom to do pretty much anything they can imagine - but it comes at the cost of needing to play the role and putting in the work. We are DMs, it is not our job to hold anyone's hand - just to give an impartial but flexible mechanism for people to play their characters in compelling and fun stories. Sure, there will be those who play the game in bad faith to ruin the fun of others - there are no rules that will prevent this. The only and best thing we can do is to find them and remove them from the game.

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FEEDBACK

[Fab]

instead of 2 lines of engagement can I drop 1 big line

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ARES / Faction Information / Feedback

[Leo]

After rereading a lot of the changes, something springs to mind. In order to get to my point, I have to explain a little bit about a famous and popular game.

I've played World of Warcraft for many many many years, about as long as I've played Freelancer in fact. While I consider myself fairly good at playing my class (Prot Warrior for life), there are those players out there that min/max the hell out of their stats and gear to the point where it becomes a second job for them. These players are playing at a level that the 99th percentile of players are not. However, Blizzard balances the game around the no-life players playing at the 1% which leads to a lot of fun builds being over-nerfed because they simply play them so well.

I feel like that's what is happening here with the transports. In the documentation, Haste (I'm assuming he wrote it based on the way it was written) writes that a lot of the transports can compete with ships that are built for combat. I have no doubt that Haste, or any skilled PvPer out there, in a Transport could probably whoop my ass in a VHF based on their ability alone. But your Tom, Dick, or Harry out there that sits down to simply run cargo to a destination is not. I can tell you that I am a shit PvPer and I would probably get my ass deleted by someone in a VHF on a Transport. Just the other night I nearly died to a VHF while I was flying a Gunboat. While my ineptitude flying a combat ship isn't the topic of this discussion, it does show that just because a group of people can use a ship in a combat setting does not necessarily mean that everyone can. You could say this is the case for any class of ship in the mod, but I feel like the balance with Transports vs. anything else (except the Grouse, Bulwark, and Longhorn) is an entirely different case as they are not purpose built to be able to take down a combat ship unless the player themselves are a skilled PvPer.

I don't mean to make a strawman out of the World of Warcraft example, but it does draw some parallels in my mind to this rule change. While I can see the reasons behind it in some cases (namely the thrust speed being one of them) I think it needs to be looked at closer to protect those players who simply want to do space trucking and not have to deal with being blown up by someone just looking for an easy blue.

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
Roleplay is dead. Long live Powertraders and PvP I guess.

[Sand-Viper]

Edit: Jeebus Cripes this got WAY too long.. Sorry, I'm super passionate about this.

A 3.6k transport that's ferrying cargo is no longer balanced in the same view as a 5k transport - but it still makes no sense for a pirate to just kill it without any motive for profit or some other externality that would compel them to exercise violence. If we find someone is needlessly murderhoboting with poor quality roleplay, despite the fact that we have publically made it known that such things are unacceptable, they will be punished.

My thought is this:
Yes, you're absolutely right - It doesn't make sense for any sensible pirate to want to just open fire on a transport hauling goodies. But, what about the "some other externality" part? What if a pirate, such as a lunatic like in Eternal.Journey's example, wants your cargo, AND wants you to suffer?

Yes, this pirate would likely get more cargo if he does not blow the transport up, and instead forced it at gunpoint to drop most of its load. But, if this lunatic-pirate prefers the sounds of pleading voices, followed by an explosion, followed again by fragments of ship showering against his hull.. Your only option at that point, is to fight.

And fighting is all well-and-easy when you have PvP experience, and know how to turret-steer.

But what is a new player even supposed to DO in that sort of situation except pull a "guess I'll die?"


Yes, OK - This sort of situation could in theory be interpreted as a violation of 1.0 "don't be a dick." The counter-argument here from the lunatic-pirate player's POV is "It's what my character would do."

But why would we want to even ALLOW this situation to happen in the FIRST place?

Under the new proposed 2.1 rule, if someone were to shoot a transport (now a combat ship), they could try and hide "being a dick" behind a thinly veiled, possibly flimsy (or maybe even fully-justified) RP excuse to shoot the transport in 10 seconds.
Then the victim has to go through the pain-staking process of:

• Collecting the evidence in a panic situation.
  
• Uploading said evidence to image/video sharing sites.
  
• Type up the report on the forum.
  
• Double-check everything, then submit the violation report.
  
• Play the waiting game while someone from the staff looks at the report, and finds the time to get back with the reporter as to "hey, it's being investigated/handled/we will speak with them."
  

Or, we could just.. Go with the current system, that already sides with the RP'er, that avoids creating a situation where a low-PvP-skill/newer player has zero-choice in getting shot at. A system which, not only avoids creating extra workload for a volunteer staff team, but also still allows the transport to be shot, IF:

• The transport either refused a demand,
  
• Or they were blown up by an ID that can already treat trade ships as combat ships.
  

Like okay, I get it - The Grouse is definitely an egregious example of a transport moonlighting as mini gunboat. So then just.. Make the Grouse be treated as a combat ship by the rules. Ez.

If a transport is used as a combat ship by a PvP ace/vet/competent player, under the current rules, it already gets treated as a combat ship since it's being used offensively.


Also, quick aside about the length of time required before shooting:
10 seconds is nothing, duuude.
Like, we have people all over Europe and Asia playing this game, many being non-native English speakers, and some being slow at reading and typing it. How are we supposed to encourage a healthy Role Playing environment, when those who can't even finish reading ONE of the preset messages, starts taking fire?

IMO, it shouldn't be 10 seconds, it should be 2 minutes, unless a defender starts trying to flee within the first 2 minutes. Even as a guy who ONLY speaks English, trying to read 2 long, preset messages in 10 seconds is strenuous.


Hot take: /1 /2 isn't RP, it's being a dick.
Don't be a dick! If you wanna shoot me, pour your heart and soul out with in-RP insults for 2 minutes before you do it - I wanna FEEL like I've had a fun read before I get blue'd!

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[R.P.Curator]

Fuck it, Forums It is:
As Leo stated above: there are not many players skilled enough to make best use of a 3.6Ker and below (excepting Grouse and Longo)
As a solo pirate, I can say first hand: 15 minutes taking down a 3.6Ker with a bomber (5.00 Guns, Neutralizers + Snacs) and I was nearly dead.
Solo venturing a 3.6ker requires skill and knowledge where are the blind spots and how to maneuver in order to land a few shots before the turrets manage to turn. So Piracy is best done in groups. Solo it at you own peril.
Now, back to the topic: IF the testers play godly in those 3.6kers and below; that's your 10-15% of the server (estimating the server is about 100 people). Those are veterans, some are connbots and know their ships.
Rest, they're DTR level or just above. There's nobody in Conn training for 3.6K PVP vs Bombers!
Most of the traders are either Longos, Bullies or 5kers, with the occasional Barge of the Contraband. Haven't seen a Serenity with Dulzians in almost 1 year. I think the only one who flies that is PJ, and he's mostly harmless. Mostly.
As for flying Grouses / Albatrosses, well, there's plenty of video footage showing that the ones who do this are veterans and good (or above) PVPers, and that falls into shenanigans, trolling and 1.0 Dickery with some of the culprits really close to home!
The player base is:
- 25% veterans and good PVPers
- 50% decent PVPers, who mostly RP, Mine, Hang around in space shooting NPCs
- 25% DTR and other innocent creatures (seal cubs, baby otters, etc)
Tailoring the rules to accommodate for the top players only opens more cans of Dickery, poorly wrote engagement lines with lackluster motives to get a blue.
A workaround until the balance drops for Grouses / Albatrosses & etc is to remove the 2.2 transport exception. If you combat dock as a transport, you're PVP dead.
This means traders and power traders will need to engage in RP and/or hire protection. No more running to the 1st station to dock and resume 10 minutes later when the pirate leaves the system. Talk, Pay or Pray. This has been done in event with success. There weren't that many complaints. I think.

[Lord Caedus]

Hey I'm going to bring up an absolutely crazy idea. Have we entertained the concept that if maybe the Grouse and other limited transports are performing so well that they're effectively better gunboats, that perhaps instead of changing rules to benefit absolutely nobody we should instead rebalance ships like the Grouse to not be massively out performing all other transports in their cargo capacity range?

Cause doing that would make a lot more sense than what is being proposed.

Edit: Wouldn't it make much more sense to simply reclassify Frigates as combat ships and rebalance ships like the Grouse to be more in line with the Ragnar and Pelican?

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[Luke.]

Really unnecessary and counter-productive to randomly throw names or groups into the conversation for no reason other than for a jab at people when illustrating a point.

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