WALL OF TEXT Pirates vs Griefers: why you're thinking about it wrong.

[GrammarGestapo]

Pirates will always have the ability to dictate engagements, sorry my friend, i choose when and where....

doesn't matter how good of a pirate you are. I guarantee, if you start hunting an organized org's members, shit like this will eventually happen to you. Sometimes a target is too juicy to resist. Often, those will just be lonely newbros out on a cargo run that couldn't afford escorts. Sometimes, it will be a trap. I fully expect people to make alternate accounts specifically for the purpose of baiting people into believing that this is an unaffiliated newbro and not a trap set by a pvp/bounty hunting org. It'll be an important to skill to determine when and who we attack, but sometimes, we just won't be able to tell the difference and will get caught.

 

[Bruttle]

I hope CIG doesn't blow holes in what they've been telling pirates and make it fucking difficult to live off of just to appease the people who are terrified of losing their stuff....

.....I'll probably still play it. But it'll always be tinged with regret and a sense of loss that the PVP oriented, competitive space sim it could have been will never be truly realized.

See, now you're looking at this game through the goggles of your expectations. This is just like others looking for a strictly PVE game and seeing this game developed through the eyes of their expectations. There needs to be a middle ground. This game cannot be exclusively PVE or PVP. It has to be both and the two need to be balanced. It needs to have combat and it needs to have farmville. It needs to have high risk, high reward as well as no risk, low reward activities.

You said you hope CIG doesn't make it "fucking difficult to live off of just to appease the people who are terrified of losing their stuff". You should ask yourself why you think that way. If someone spends days or weeks working up a big haul of cargo, why shouldn't it be difficult for you to take it? What makes you think that the game should allow you to just swing on in and grab it.

How did you put it up in your previous post? "Carebears are basically cash balloons." Why should pirates be able to grab a free load of loot while everyone else has to earn it? Your argument is very one-sided. You want it to be fair as long as it is in your favor. I personally think it should be extremely difficult if not impossible to be a profitable pirate. If it took days or weeks for them to earn that load of loot, than it should take you days or weeks to get it away from them. They worked hard to earn it and you should too. If you don't like farming or hauling, fine. But it doesn't mean you deserve a free ride.

You mention EVE. There is a reason why EVE never got much more than 500,000 subs. That's because only a small subset of MMO players actually want to be a part of a game like that. There is absolutely no way that this game will survive on a half million people. It has grown far too big for that now. It has proven itself ascended far beyond merely just a PVP dogfighting game. This is why it already has three times as many subscribers than EVE. It has that many subscribers because it is not and will never be EVE 2.0.

This is not a pirate game. This is just a game that has the ability for players to be pirates. In fact, CR himself has stated several times that this will not be like EVE. If it's eve you want, you are going to be very disappointed. Millions and millions of others will be happy, but you will be disappointed.

 

[Crymsan]

If pirates can mostly dictate when an encounter happens they are the equivalent of cloaked assassin waiting for a lemming to jump in front of them. Big warrior approaches said pirate passes the opportunity for a fight (smart and all that). All I am saying is if that's the whole game who is going to want to be a lemming. (If pirates can always dictate an encounter the game is broken).

If it comes down to convoys the same applies, to well defended pass, just attack the next one and so on.

For this to have any chance of working a bounty hunter has to also be able to get the drop on said pirate. Sadly in eve it usually involved said pirate logging off.

The other side to this is if pirating is easy and profitable then the numbers will grow and there will be less bounty hunters less prey. Plus the prey wont make money and will quit.

 

[Varku]

If pirates can mostly dictate when an encounter happens they are the equivalent of cloaked assassin waiting for a lemming to jump in front of them. Big warrior approaches said pirate passes the opportunity for a fight (smart and all that). All I am saying is if that's the whole game who is going to want to be a lemming. (If pirates can always dictate an encounter the game is broken).

If it comes down to convoys the same applies, to well defended pass, just attack the next one and so on.

For this to have any chance of working a bounty hunter has to also be able to get the drop on said pirate. Sadly in eve it usually involved said pirate logging off.

The other side to this is if pirating is easy and profitable then the numbers will grow and there will be less bounty hunters less prey. Plus the prey wont make money and will quit.

Yes, bounty hunter will also be able to get the jump on them, team up with a ship with powerfull scanners, and try to find them, jackpot if you manage to find their outpost.

 

[AstroSam]

Typical griefer corp: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/ROAR/

They spawn, kill, run away.

Pirates are o.K. insofar as they integrate themselves in the RPG, not only with the intention to destroy/kill without reason.

 

[Bruttle]

If pirates can mostly dictate when an encounter happens they are the equivalent of cloaked assassin waiting for a lemming to jump in front of them. Big warrior approaches said pirate passes the opportunity for a fight (smart and all that). All I am saying is if that's the whole game who is going to want to be a lemming.

I was worried about the same thing earlier. I was worried about it until I got caught out in space with no quantum fuel. I can see Crusader in the distance about the size of a dime. So, I set the ship on auto-cruise and walk away for a smoke and a drink. I came back about 10 minutes later, and fucked if it wasn't still the size of a dime.

So what I took away from the whole thing was how huge space in this game really is. You get a false sense of distance jumping around with your Q-drive. However, you can stop anywhere in between jump points. Hell, you can jump out into nowhere if you are running. Just imagine how things are right now. If you can get lost in the black in just Stanton system, just imagine how it will be with a dozen systems.

So what that means to me is, a full freighter can hide. A full freighter could be anywhere in this huge universe. So how on earth are pirates going to find cargo? I think there will be 3 options.

• Catch them loading. This will likely take some backstabbing. Johnny starts talking in mumble about loading up, Mike in mumble hears this and passes the info off the the local bad guys for a cut of the action.
• Catch them delivering. This may or may not work depending on the security in the sector. Even then, it would require knowing where they are jumping in from so you can catch them before the armistice zone. You would also need to catch them before they jump away.
• The last way will be cruising around in your herald, terrapin, DUR, carrack, etc. and scanning for ships. You may get lucky, you may not. At least this way you can catch them unaware and off guard. You may even catch them outside a security station.

Of course, there will be other factors that play into this. If you disable security, will they immediately run? Is there going to be a time requirement to loading cargo. If there is insta-loading/unloading, it will make a couple of these options go away. Then you have the question of how far scanners can be pushed out. Can you even scan a large enough area to catch a ship before it passes you by or jumps away.

The truth is, there are so many questions that need to be answered before we can really be concerned about anything. All we can do is continue giving feedback and opinions and hope CIG keeps this thing pointed in the right direction.

 

[supitza]

See, now you're looking at this game through the goggles of your expectations. This is just like others looking for a strictly PVE game and seeing this game developed through the eyes of their expectations. There needs to be a middle ground. This game cannot be exclusively PVE or PVP. It has to be both and the two need to be balanced. It needs to have combat and it needs to have farmville. It needs to have high risk, high reward as well as no risk, low reward activities.

You said you hope CIG doesn't make it "fucking difficult to live off of just to appease the people who are terrified of losing their stuff". You should ask yourself why you think that way. If someone spends days or weeks working up a big haul of cargo, why shouldn't it be difficult for you to take it? What makes you think that the game should allow you to just swing on in and grab it.

How did you put it up in your previous post? "Carebears are basically cash balloons." Why should pirates be able to grab a free load of loot while everyone else has to earn it? Your argument is very one-sided. You want it to be fair as long as it is in your favor. I personally think it should be extremely difficult if not impossible to be a profitable pirate. If it took days or weeks for them to earn that load of loot, than it should take you days or weeks to get it away from them. They worked hard to earn it and you should too. If you don't like farming or hauling, fine. But it doesn't mean you deserve a free ride.

You mention EVE. There is a reason why EVE never got much more than 500,000 subs. That's because only a small subset of MMO players actually want to be a part of a game like that. There is absolutely no way that this game will survive on a half million people. It has grown far too big for that now. It has proven itself ascended far beyond merely just a PVP dogfighting game. This is why it already has three times as many subscribers than EVE. It has that many subscribers because it is not and will never be EVE 2.0.

This is not a pirate game. This is just a game that has the ability for players to be pirates. In fact, CR himself has stated several times that this will not be like EVE. If it's eve you want, you are going to be very disappointed. Millions and millions of others will be happy, but you will be disappointed.

This.
I enjoy PVP in most of the games I play. I've played WoW for years and never took an interest in the PVE aspect of it. And even though I enjoyed fighting in battlegrounds or arenas, I made the huge mistake of joining a PVP server. That means that on your server, you can be attacked wherever (with some restrictions) and whenever. That I didn't like.
If Star Citizen will have a "PVP meter", I'll slide that bar down to zero. If I feel like PVP-ing, I'll hop into Arena Commander. But I don't want my huge time investment (a massive haul, for example) to go to waste if I'm attacked by a pirate and looted. That's not enjoyable for me.
If I flag myself for PVP, fine. I acknowledge the risk of meeting pirates and getting looted. But I'd rather have to option to choose if I want to expose myself to such encounters.
It's not because I'm not a fan of PVP. I am. I'm just not a fan of investing time into something and having it taken away without my consent.

 

[PontifusRex]

Even though I intend to play Mining/Cargo runner, I like the idea of piracy being in the game. The fear of loss is critical to creating an enjoyable game from that professions perspective. However, to echo some of the statements here, there needs to be a balance and there are multiple ways to do this.

Living a life of piracy will obviously result in others being paid to find you and destroy you. There can't be a cheap way (logging out) of avoiding this loss. It must be skill based. Additionally, living in a den of thieves shouldn't result in the most economically friendly environment. Insurance and other related items should be higher proportionately for those actively stealing and/or killing (or even some cases completely unavailable). Raw good prices should be managed by whatever internal market is available to them, but complex goods (like a spaceship) shouldn't necessarily be available at the regular market prices unless the pirates setup intermediaries who have a clean(er) record and can buy these goods without penalty and sell the pirates loot on a more widely available market. This concept really opens up the smuggling market which I feel is essential for piracy to work properly. I think this would add a whole level to the game, because the pirates essentially determine their own future as a whole. Too much unbridled reckless piracy and smugglers are no longer profitable because they have become targets as well, so they back out of the system and prices skyrocket for the pirates (for the stuff they can't directly steal at least).

There are likely many other great ideas of how to manage this, but I'm excited about all the possibilities. Maybe if it is attractive enough, I may dip my toe in it as well.

 

[Lexicon]

In a system like EVE, where ships and guns are made by dudes, piracy is a critical part of the economy. If nobody blows up your ship, when would you ever need a new ship? In order for shipmakers to keep making ships, someone has to buy them - which means someone has to make them need to buy them.

Star Citizen is not EVE. Dudes do not make ships and guns, faceless megacorps with infinite procedurally-generated bankrolls make ships and guns. There is no "need" for ships and guns to be replaced - the game generates most of its own supply and demand. A pirate has no value here save as a nuisance.

Likewise, piracy would be valuable if it can create the concept of "scarcity" and drive up the price of scarce items. But it can't even do that! Remember, this is not EVE - we are not gods, we're just dudes. CR has said the game economy is 80% NPC-controlled specifically so players cannot corner a market no matter how much they try. Pirates can cause a minor upswing in profits, sure - but never "doubled prices."

Sure, I would take a single run of loss in exchange for nine doubled runs. But what you're actually offering me is closer to 110% than 200% per run, and that math just doesn't work out in my favor.

 

[Varku]

About this "logout to avoid death" issue:
Loggingout may not save your ship.
If you logout while not in your bed, (and maybe other requirements like out of combat)
Your ship will be persistent. Some AI will take over, and fly it to the next space station.
If you logout while in your bed, your ship will stay where it is, and derender after a short delay.

So logging out, to prevent damage to your ship/your charakter may not work the way you know from other games.

 

[PontifusRex]

About this "logout to avoid death" issue:
Loggingout may not save your ship.
If you logout while not in your bed, (and maybe other requirements like out of combat)
Your ship will be persistent. Some AI will take over, and fly it to the next space station.
If you logout while in your bed, your ship will stay where it is, and derender after a short delay.

So logging out, to prevent damage to your ship/your charakter may not work the way you know from other games.

So this is something they have stated? If so, that is great to hear!

 

[Varku]

So this is something they have stated? If so, that is great to hear!

$14,000,000 Stretch goal:
Hibernation Mode: for the explorers out there, we will add the ability to save and resume while you are out in space. When not in combat, power your ship down, hit the bunk, and exit the game safely until you can resume your journey.
--------------------------------
Also, for more details, check this Reddit Post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/path%3D%252Fr%252Fstarcitizen%252Fcomments%252F1vrbav%252Fwhat_do_we_know_about_logging_inout_of_the_game%252Fcev31cn View: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1vrbav/what_do_we_know_about_logging_inout_of_the_game/cev31cn


----------repost from Reddit-----------
Lot of confusion floating around, and I'm not near a computer to get sources for this, but here's a quick rundown of the various options:

Option A: Log out in your hangar: your ship is perfectly safe.

Option B: Log out somewhere in space, when you're 'safe'/could activate auto pilot, by entering hibernation: you and your ship are no longer active in the universe and you're safe.

Option C: Log out in space while in danger/under attack/in an instance with other players or NPCs/without a bed to hibernate: Your ship will attempt to escape. If successful, it will pilot back to your last safe port/planet (probably enter hibernation if applicable); if unsuccessful, you, your ship, and your cargo are destroyed/at the mercy of your attackers. If you reconnect during this time, you'll pick up wherever your ship is, be in safe in your hangar, if flight, or in pieces.

Assume intentionally logging out and network disconnects are treated the same. Logging out safely in deep space in a Hornet or similar will cause you to auto-pilot 'home'; doing the same in an Aurora/any ship with hibernation bunks, will likely place you in hibernation and log you out.

These claims are guaranteed to be 94.6% accurate.

----------------------------------------

 

[MzHartz]

How To Be An Ethical Pirate In Game Right Now / How To Have Mischievous Fun Without Being a Griefer

1. Turn off com arrays
2. Shoot down Crusader Security
3. Hang out around a busy monitored area, such as the ICC Probe, and wait for people to attack you.
4. Before long, you'll be a Public Enemy. More people will attack you. Yay!
5. Have fun with your consensual PVP.

 

[Doctor Antelope]

How To Be An Ethical Pirate In Game Right Now / How To Have Mischievous Fun Without Being a Griefer

1. Turn off com arrays
2. Shoot down Crusader Security
3. Hang out around a busy monitored area, such as the ICC Probe, and wait for people to attack you.
4. Before long, you'll be a Public Enemy. More people will attack you. Yay!
5. Have fun with your consensual PVP.

Or ya know... Just hang out at Kareah and blow everyone up that comes nearby. It is specifically a PvP area, the only things to do there are PvP related. There is no com array in that area for a reason. There is specifically a mission created by CIG for you to prevent hacks, so don't tell me preventing someone trying to get rid of criminal status is griefing.

 

[Callahad]

I just hope CR puts as much thought into this game as we all do :)

 

[GrammarGestapo]

See, now you're looking at this game through the goggles of your expectations. This is just like others looking for a strictly PVE game and seeing this game developed through the eyes of their expectations. There needs to be a middle ground. This game cannot be exclusively PVE or PVP. It has to be both and the two need to be balanced. It needs to have combat and it needs to have farmville. It needs to have high risk, high reward as well as no risk, low reward activities.

You said you hope CIG doesn't make it "fucking difficult to live off of just to appease the people who are terrified of losing their stuff". You should ask yourself why you think that way. If someone spends days or weeks working up a big haul of cargo, why shouldn't it be difficult for you to take it? What makes you think that the game should allow you to just swing on in and grab it.

How did you put it up in your previous post? "Carebears are basically cash balloons." Why should pirates be able to grab a free load of loot while everyone else has to earn it? Your argument is very one-sided. You want it to be fair as long as it is in your favor. I personally think it should be extremely difficult if not impossible to be a profitable pirate. If it took days or weeks for them to earn that load of loot, than it should take you days or weeks to get it away from them. They worked hard to earn it and you should too. If you don't like farming or hauling, fine. But it doesn't mean you deserve a free ride.

You mention EVE. There is a reason why EVE never got much more than 500,000 subs. That's because only a small subset of MMO players actually want to be a part of a game like that. There is absolutely no way that this game will survive on a half million people. It has grown far too big for that now. It has proven itself ascended far beyond merely just a PVP dogfighting game. This is why it already has three times as many subscribers than EVE. It has that many subscribers because it is not and will never be EVE 2.0.

This is not a pirate game. This is just a game that has the ability for players to be pirates. In fact, CR himself has stated several times that this will not be like EVE. If it's eve you want, you are going to be very disappointed. Millions and millions of others will be happy, but you will be disappointed.

let me rephrase that: I hope CIG makes piracy an actually viable way to earn money, rather than punishing it to the point that it's impossible to maintain. I'm not saying "hurr durr I'll be richer than everyone just by stealing what they make". I'm saying that it should be a system in which I can both survive and thrive. Not be some piss poor criminal who can only survive on the edges of space living off scraps because I chose to be the bad guy in a game where being the bad guy is supposed to be a valid playstyle. Carebears are cash balloons because THEY'RE IN A POORLY ARMED AND ARMORED CARGO SHIP AND NEED PROTECTION. You can't have both max cargo and max PVP effectiveness. That's not how ship balancing works. Unless it's a bengal, but that's a bengal. It's designed to be OP. I am not at all saying piracy should be the easiest, fastest, and most fun way to earn money in the game. You forget, those cash balloons will be surrounded by very angry and very well armed escorts that are all too willing to tear me a new asshole, if they can.


Also, I don't want this to be EVE 2.0 at all. There are certain aspects that make EVE formidable, sure, the dog-eat-dog world is one of them. But the biggest issue is the way it works at a fundamental level. Most people find the combat boring. Most people never get in contact with groups of people who know what they're doing and flounder because they have no idea how to actually have fun. There is no effective way to enjoy single player unless you're the type of person that can find actual fulfillment in nothing more than your wallet going up as you mine a rock and build ships to sell. SC is not going to be this type of game at all. It will have actual, meaningful single player content. It has an easy to understand, difficult to master combat system that any newbro can figure out pretty quickly and become decent at. That doesn't mean it can't and won't learn things from EVE. There are some things EVE does that provide such incredible depth and richness to the player interaction that no other game currently in existence even comes close. I want that kind of community in SC. I want wars, I want alliances, I want politics and stories that people who've never even played star citizen can read about on the internet and get excited over. All I want from EVE is the depth of human interaction it allows. Not the suicide ganking. Not the scamming. Not the esoteric, poorly designed systems that are impossible for a single person to understand without hours of reading.

 

[GrammarGestapo]

logging out to avoid combat will be impossible. It's incredibly easy to fix. Just add a timer that activates whenever you engage in combat with another person. look at it this way, a person shoots you or you shoot him. In that instant, a 15 minute timer starts up. You shoot again, the 15 minute timer resets to 15 minutes. It's a non-issue and CIG will have that handled perfectly fine. You will be able to log out in space, your ship will disappear and be unable to be damaged. Trying to log out in combat will just leave your ship pilotless and get you killed. Oh, and don't forget, add a 30 second delay to logging out in ANY situation. That way, the guy can't just log out by pulling the plug when he sees pirates before they have a chance to close the range.

 

[GrammarGestapo]

If pirates can mostly dictate when an encounter happens they are the equivalent of cloaked assassin waiting for a lemming to jump in front of them. Big warrior approaches said pirate passes the opportunity for a fight (smart and all that). All I am saying is if that's the whole game who is going to want to be a lemming. (If pirates can always dictate an encounter the game is broken).

If it comes down to convoys the same applies, to well defended pass, just attack the next one and so on.

For this to have any chance of working a bounty hunter has to also be able to get the drop on said pirate. Sadly in eve it usually involved said pirate logging off.

The other side to this is if pirating is easy and profitable then the numbers will grow and there will be less bounty hunters less prey. Plus the prey wont make money and will quit.

pirates can always dictate the encounter with convoys because the assumption is that peaceful trading convoys don't go around shooting random people or hunting pirates.

Clearly, bounty hunters should be able to scan down, trap, and intercept pirates.

 

[GojiraSamurai]

log out while under attack? or as it's known to " COMBAT LOG " please if your going to consider this type of response to PvP gameplay, then you should probably just un-install the game :eek:

 

[GrammarGestapo]

log out while under attack? or as it's known to " COMBAT LOG " please if your going to consider this type of response to PvP gameplay, then you should probably just un-install the game :eek:

though I agree 100%, that will never stop some people from trying it. This is why we have systems in place to prevent them from getting away with it.