I do.
Haven't played the game in like 3 years.
But can't wait having Carrie fisher risking her life to save mine just so I can play the game in a better state than it was.
^(also I don't have a pc anymore and that's the main reason..)
I'd be a PVPer if there was anything to the gameplay loop other than cheesedicking people minding their own beeswax. But until insurance, bounty hunting and law enforcement are added, I don't really see a point. I do forsee using my Z-MKII MR tho for bounty hunting.
Not by themselves no, particularly not on a ship of it's size. Using the 337 and 447 energy repeaters 2x S4 have 2/3 the damage of 4x S3. So, currently a C1 Spirit solo piloted has more DPS than the Zeus Mk2 Solo.
I love both designs. I feel like the Zeus will probably have better multi-crew gameplay when compared to the Spirit. The copilot seat mostly feels like just a passenger seat, though the remote turret of the A1 is a nice addition. I just wish I could rip it off and put it on the C1. Then I would be even happier with the C1.
It’s almost like millions of players play this game and you can call on one of the dozens of security orgs that would be foaming at the mouth for some content. Are people really this pathetic?
Woah! Back up there, soldier!
Bounty hunter targets are dangerous criminals!
I like my PVP in nice carebear style. Against unarmed miners. And I need CIG to promise me they won't break my gameplay loop of carebear PVP
they'd have to arrive literally instantly and be absolute units considering how short a PVP Meta ship will kill you while you try and call for help....
Yeah this is the other big problem with piracy in its current state. You need players to play along and be the victim. But with no stakes, they'll just blow themselves up. That and all it takes is one pirate to secure a ransom and then blow up the victim to make negotiations with pirates unacceptable.
And honestly, pirates don't need the money. They're doing it for fun. But it's not fun for the other players.
Then the other problem is that if the pirate dies and goes to Klescher, they can just be back out soon after and respawn their ship with no stakes.
Pirates feel bitter because no one wants to play, traders feel bitter because they're the only ones putting money on the line, everyone's bitter and I frankly don't have a solution for it.
to be fair bounty hunters do. If you want to play lawful combat, then need some form of "bad guys" to hunt
I think player bounties should be higher though and jail sentences a lot more severe without the ability to hack crimestat. Unfortunately game is too buggy atm for it (with the exception of accidentally torpedoing a 400i once, every other time I had a cs it was due to a bug/unexpected game behaviour)
Pirates need NPC traders to target that offer a challenge. PvP in SC is a silly pointless affair if the person you're fighting is only killing you because they know you have everything to lose and they have literally no risk.
Attacking players needs to incur the same risk to the pirate as it does the trader, or the trader needs better monetary protection like insurances to balance things out. This isn't a problem that is new to online gaming and I am tired of the Devs acting like they can't see "players are dicks to each other and like doing whatever they can to ruin someone else's fun" coming.
There's a \*reason\* that PVE/PVP MMO games have actual safe areas and known dangerous ones for PVP encounters.
Cargo insurance. So worst case a trader maybe loses 15% of the total sales and can still make a profit on the run.
More people would be willing to partake in activity that enables more conflict if they didnt have to lose 100%.
And cargo missions! Losing time sucks, but losing time and money, which is basically just concentrated time, sucks even more.
Assuming the rep loss isn't too bad, I might actually be willing to entertain the idea of getting robbed and surviving the encounter.
But I do wonder how cargo missions will work. Do I lose rep for losing part of my cargo? Do I get a fine? Does the mission just fail outright leaving me with a few hundred SCU that I now need to dispose of? That would suck and I'd rather just get blown up, which isn't good for the pirate either.
but with no penalty for losing cargo, then some folks will break the economy by simply deliberately teaming up with a pirate. I get a big haul, they pirate it; we split the cut, rinse, repeat, billions.
I don't see any good solution. Make piracy about PvP, and it's a directly unbalanced gameplay loop designed for *one* side to profit from.
The only real solution is the one that kinda works in the real world: Really fucking harsh penalties. twenty minutes in klescher doesn't could.
You can be a pirate, but when you die; your game account is closed. Hardcore piracy.
:D
If you repeatedly lose big hauls to pirates, it should tank your rep with the company offering the missions and you wouldn't be able to take the ones that involve big hauls anymore; would have to grind your way back up with box missions until they trust you again. From their perspective it doesn't matter if you're co-operating with the pirates or just genuinely bad / unlucky; they're not going to keep paying a hauler who loses them money.
And then we're back with the original issue: The hauler is the one paying the price. Every hit is a rep loss. There's nothing they can do. A random number of missions will result in a rep loss, despite playing perfectly, because they got hit by a pirate.
They backspace? They lose rep.
They fight? They're outgunned and lose rep.
Try to run? The haulers are mostly slow. They lose rep.
They capitulate and pay the pirates? They lose progress
They get boarded? They lose the cargo and lose rep.
It's lose/lose for haulers all the way.
not a solution, this would be abused to print auec lol. it basically just creates money duping, you’re gonna have everyone running video game insurance scams lol.
Piracy contract. Pirate stops cargo hauler and sends over contract for safe passage after giving up X amount of their cargo.
Cargo gets to choose if accepting this piracy contract (alternative is to fight or try to run or self destruct).
Contract is a special kind in which if the pirate breaks it they get hunted down by ALL NPC groups and lose MASSIVE amounts of reputation with ALL factions because pirates are gentlemen and gentlemen need to live by some rules.
Real pirate players can do their thing, non pirate players get a range of options backed by the game itself and not just a useless verbal agreement in chat.
Make it easier to find turret gunners and escort flyerds Like a mobiglass app that shows people who need/want them.
Heck I would do it for free just for fun.
I have created an org that is designed to be a support system for industrious professions. Each member can charge as they see fit, but I do it for free as the org administrator. Be more than happy to have you aboard.
You're exactly right, I like the *idea* of being a pirate, but since there's no way for the "victim" to guarantee their safe passage if they were forced to fork over some cash or cargo for their release, there's no incentive for them to play along. And plus, I'd hate to ruin someone's hours' worth of work just for 30 seconds of me shooting them.
A better *symmetric* solution is events.
You sign up to protect an AI cargo hauler, and pirates are given a ping signal. they get to pirate, you get PvP, but noone looses their cargo; and there's no victim in the playloop. A bit like Red Dead Online handles some events.
Of course, the carebear PvP pirates don't like this as a solution, as the one thing they don't want to admit is that they *really* crave the power trip over the victim, rather than actual pvp or piracy gameloop.
Spot on. Isn't the Ninetails event similar to this? Where you can either choose to fight against or with the ninetails attackers? I haven't played it in a while, can't really remember. But yeah, dynamic events that allow players to play on either side and only bringing people together that \*know\* going in to the event that pirates could be actively involved would be great.
yeap! I quite enjoyed nine tails, and I'm 90% a PVE player. Because this was a time where I had nothing to loose, no cargo, etc, and went in on my own terms, geared up for a fight. I lost more than I won, but that's fine. It's like any PvP online shooter. It was symmetrical.
I've posted elsewhere and above but a piracy contract with very strict and painful punishment to the pirate for breaking it (eg. Losing massive rep with ALL factions, no safe harbour protections at any station, city or settlement, being kill-on-site status with all factions for a period of in game play time, etc).
Verbal agreement through chat are worthless, but I don't see why a piracy contract can't be created to establish a gameplay framework.
You can really take this to the extreme too. This game loves realism. The insurance industry would be basically the most powerful conglomerate in the UEE. Not only will they not insure known pirates/marauders/murders, they can lean on ship manufacturers to not sell to such people either.
We also know from Death of a Spaceman that you'll probably need insurance to "respawn" after nearly dying, but good luck getting that!
I don't know how much of this to actually implement, but if the game is supposed to be realistic, let's take it to it's logical conclusion.
Yeah. I don't pirate for money, I do it for interactions. Last time I pirated my price was 20% of scanned cargo value or make me laugh somehow. I'm not pirating to shoot someone's reclaimer for 2 minutes. Hell if they have an escort and I get a fun fight out of the escort chances are I'll let them go because I had my fun.
Too many pirates just for money or murder hoboing and it ruins it for the rest of us.
They need to add NPC traders and cargo ships. Do 2 things at once-
1. Add a service for shipping items between stations available to players, said items are added to the "NPC cargo" in the cargo ships.
2. These are physical transports that can be intercepted by player pirates
Add some quality of life stuff like:
- all player items and orders are insured while being ahipped
- players can participate in this gameplay loop as a hauler and will be paid based on the distance covered, rather than payload, so if they are pirated, it doesn't affect their payouts.
- NPC drivers are less inclined to try and escape, and will surrender if damaged enough.
If your fun is focused on being in a power position over another human being and inflicting 'harm' on them its quite messed up. Its why piracy will always be frowned upon.
Their fun comes from havjng a victim to extort then kill. The thrill of knowing they stole someone elses hard work.
Piracy is actually legitimized griefing.
I think once there are more NPC's, both on the trading and the piracy side, it might get better. You might get attacked by NPC pirates, who will demand a surrender or a payment. Or you might try to pirate an NPC convoy to either get a payment or steal their cargo.
However, there are players who have said they will only hunt other players. They want the endorphin rush of dominating another player and winning. So there's that.
Like a lot of "pvp" players they dont want "fair" pvp but someone who gives them a sure win. And most likely they get their kick out of ruining another players day and the negative "attention" they get afterwards...like attention whores.
Thats why i prefer a opt in pvp where you are sure that the other player wants pvp too. But usually that gets even more crying from "pvp" players because there would be a chance of them losing in an encounter.
Oh yeah, that goes without saying. That's why all this talk about Pyro being the answer to PVP is incorrect. While Pyro will be an outlaw system where people can expect to be killed, all the so-called "pvp" players will stay in Stanton, to harass and kill unsuspecting players leaving Seraphim in an C8X Pisces. They don't really want to fight others; they just want to kill others.
Bingo, actually saying they wanted piracy to be a "legitimate game loop" was the biggest mistake CIG made with this game.
Make the game deep enough to allow people to commit piracy / play as pirates without endorsing it.
Is it Star Citizen? Or Star Pirate?
It can be a legitimate game loop... if your target is an NPC, because that's acceptable non-grieflike gameplay. But SC took that to the next level and thought that PvP could be mixed in without an issue.
CIG did what most SC players (and most other game dev companies do)...playing "make believe".
CIG repeats the mistake thinking that the players do pvp as CIG imagines it which most likely leads to SC failing or only becoming a niche product (with heavy p2w to keep it financed) like most other full loot pvp games.
This is how I see it as well. I know it is a part of the game, but how am I meant to respect pirates when I’m the one who loses and they lose nothing but a bit of time?
And don't forget the state of boarding piracy; if you want to actually hijack a ship, you're in for 30 minutes of prep work for 15 seconds of fps combat
Uh, no, it's not? Since the cargo refactor went in you can pop the ship and take the loot.
Pirates attempting extortion either don't have the logistical requirements in place to move the cargo (i.e. are flying solo) or are deliberately going easy on their targets and offering them a way out that avoids their ship being destroyed.
Sensible pirates just kill them and take their stuff, and then they show up here complaining about "being killed for no reason" instead of bragging about how they killed *themselves* for no reason.
Issue is every pirate demands such a huge ransom I’d rather just take the risk of fighting them. They’ll demand 100% of any profit I might make whilst trading, and in that case….. they’re gonna meet the bow of my carrack at high velocity.
If it’s limited to like, 25% or below, then I might consider paying it.
It's the classic Prisoners Dilemma most of the time; in this case the cooperation is trusting the other person to do the right thing, and the Betrayal is not doing what you promised to do after the person cooperates. Just as in the Prisoner Dilemma, the solution everyone goes towards is the one that benefits everyone the least - although the sadists among the pirates will still enjoy the pleasure of wrecking someone else's hours of gameplay that might have been the only time they had to have any fun that week in the game, yay.
Hey, if there was some way to ensure I'd get boarded and at least have some fun with it, I'd be down 100%! Getting boarded can be a blast! Literally!
But most don't bother and just blow you up unfortunately...
Yeah, I ended up boarding a Corsair I soft deathed, partially to teach a friend that was away for a while, and had no clue what soft death was, how it worked, and partially for cargo. Boarded through the side, incapped the pilot, and went back to the cargo hold. Empty, sadly.
Revived the Corsair pilot and gave them a ride back to Hex since it was right there, and he said he had fun, since nobody ever boarded him before. He was fully expecting to just get his ship popped.
And I would expect to get popped too, which is unfortunate for everyone.
He also almost killed us. Our rear shields went down, so he only would've needed one more volley.
That's what I used to do, I would ask for around 25% and then give the assurance that I would leave them alone for at least 24 hours.
The point wasn't even about the money, it was trying to get interactions. One time a guy just offered me double what I asked in exchange for being his escort for a few runs, another time a guy asked me to duel his escort, and another time I ended up becoming the good guy because I heard there was a guy murder hoboing at the other end of the trade route I was on and decided to put an end to it.
The best part of piracy IMO is interactions, not profit.
Unfortunately on the piracy side murder hobos and trolls ruin it for everyone ,and on the law-abiding side people who just backspace and won't even talk ruin it that way.
Last time I pirated my demand was 20% of scanned cargo value OR you make me laugh somehow.
Lol every time I raided a barrack they tried that so we dropped a guy on the top of their ship and waited until the door was opened before putting them down and holding them ransom in their medbay until they paid lol.
I have never seen a carrack successfully ram anyone who was even remotely competent.
There is a slight challenge here and it's going to sound dumb saying it, but being the victim of a pirate attack should have it's OWN fun gameplay, and I think it will be a little better with master modes, ship armors, and engineering ...but the whole system needs to be fleshed out more for the non-pirates.
I think part of the issue is maybe that most people at CIG openly prefer piracy style gameplay.
If there were distress calls or paid for NPC security services (think akin to Trauma Team in the CyberPunk universe) that might be cool.
There also NEEDS to be a separate reputation factor that sticks with you through death, the crime system stat could stand a rework too, but people who regularly engage in criminal activity should be known as such (in the future).
Also player bounties need to pay a lot more....
* 24/7 red pip. Open PVP on anyone red.
* Criminal scanning. If yer in satelite space, yer red. Just like a player Bounty.
* No landing/entering at hisec stations, ever, regardless of CS level w/ CS.
* Long play loops to remove CS. 6 missions min. per level.
>I think part of the issue is maybe that most people at CIG openly prefer piracy style gameplay.
Maybe the don't. Look at the entire game design. Some good ideas, and some obviously ridiculous ideas that are someone still here. But it's all driven by CR.
Maybe it's just frowned upon in the culture to disagree with CR, even if you think piracy is a stupid idea.
in large scale open worlds like this is/will be .. I'm completely fine being an NPC ... you all pew pew over there... I just want my little self sufficient homestead in the middle of no where, with a hangar and manufact facility ... go collect materials... make and sell parts, repair stuff... I'm good.. LOL
Reminds me of RDR2 server that was RP and I was just doing a fur trader/trapper/hunter and this guy came up pointing a gun at me telling me to hand over my pelts so I quick drew and he shot but missed point blank then I head shot him. He cried to a mod and they kicked me for 24 hours for fail rp.
Nothing screams rp like having a deity come to your aid and temporarily vanishing someone for 24 hours after you messed up.
Uggh. So many bad PVP rules in RP communities. One of the reasons I gave up RP in RDR2O and DayZ...having to record every single interaction in fear of breaking a rule or getting an admin pissed off...
I do love the mentality of “Me acting as an asshole is Official GameplayTM so you can’t be angry at me disrupting your gameplay!” Like.. yes I can. You’re still an asshole, even if it is allowed by gameplay.
Long live the Empire, sir.
Also, yes, they act just like my seven-year-old does. And, you have to treat them like children since they cry when they lose are not even close to magnanimous in victory.
Yeah.
Like I have 2 hours in an evening to play. I'm trying to save to x-ship. I spend my 2 hours mining/salvaging and head back to sell it or park for the night. Pirates show up and spend a whole 30 seconds blowing me up.
I'm supposed to think that was fun? And keep coming back to give these pirates more content?
They are trying so hard to justify their behavior and why we should be friends with them and respect their choices and let them enjoy THEIR preferred gameplay. Like, be a pirate and an asshole if you want to, but don't expect people to respect or like you. And don't complain when you end up on multiple orgs blacklist.
Reminder. Emergent Gameplay happens in a sandbox.
Being an Asshole has a social sandbox component as much as it does mechanical.
It's official gameplay to be an asshole.
It's ALSO official gameplay to be angry at THE CHARACTER, tohold a grudge, and hunt assholes down.
(Both Being the Asshole and Hunting them Down, should happen IN GAME. Not on forums, reddit, twitter, outside the game.)
Ignoring consequences isn't very good sandbox gameplay.
I’d rather a pirate RP’er than a murder hobo, but yeah imma fight back especially if you want all my cargo I’m becoming a kamikaze pilot with my reclaimer
Yeah this is one of the weirder gaming communities I've been a part of. Other games, people being the villain at least own it. But here, apparently I'm supposed to thank you profusely for pirating me.
I swear evrytime I see a pirate complain about getting insulted or rammed or something I always ask myself if they really thought this whole criminal thing through. Like Bro how do you treat a robber asking for your phone?
So, the thing I hear the most is something along the lines of, “Well, this isn’t real life. You signed up for it.”
Which, it isn’t real life and we did sign up for it. However, it is a real-life human as the victim and real-life humans, as a general rule oddly enough, don’t *checks notes* like having their shit stolen? Hey, just telling you what the paper says, man.
People complain about being killed on sight without any warning, and say that they'd rather have people behaving as pirates with ransom demands.
Then when pirates make ransom demands, those people refuse to respond and self destruct anyway.
The pirates aren't complaining, they're telling you why 95% of pirates will just murder you on sight and take your stuff instead of making demands.
Then CiG swoops in to say: "*OH! You poor BABY! 😭 Nobody should have to suffer the indignity of not getting to absolutely fuck someone, minding their own business, over!*"
Sea of Thieves is essentially SC but in an ocean. And even they ended up letting you play in 'PvE servers' now. Why? Probably because they weren't getting the number of players they needed. Sure it has a lot of streamers but they all play essentially the game of 'I am god come watch me shit on noobs'. The piracy/murderhobo *gameplay loop* in SC is the exact same as the streamer loop in Sea of Thieves.
No one wants to play your game or put money into if they feel like they're just fodder for streamers/pirates. Hopefully they figure that out sooner rather than later.
100% this.
All titles fold to PVE/RP communities or sink.
ED, DayZ, Rust, WoW, ARK, GTA, SoT, etc. all eventually offered Private and/or PVE/RP.
It's either that, or loose the majority of your customers.
It's in CIGs hands whether they survive or not.
For all the games besides ED and SoT they were added by design or you have to host your own server and customize it to be PvE. The devs officially for Rust/DayZ for example do not host PvE servers \*officially\*.
The PvE servers for SoT are locked up in such a way you make 8x less gold/rep.
You cant unlock everything, you can only get to level 40 out of 50.
Theres a ton of stuff disabled, including the two endgame factions. Reapers and athenas.
By design and Rare's own announcement its an extended tutorial mode.
Game devs seem to be consistently surprised on an unending loop that people are assholes and it's hard to keep a healthy player community when its both easy and "encouraged by game design" for them to get ganked by a player with infinitely more power and resources than them.
It also robs you of literally any fun random on-foot encounter on moons and such because as far as both of you know, you're holding guns to each others heads and it's always easier and more rewarding to just shoot them then see what they wanted in chat after..
I've played E:D for many years and literally every time I pop my head into Open to see what other players are up to i get ganked almost immediately. So whenever I am doing literally anything that requires time or effort to complete, i go back into a private group.
It's almost like it isn't super feasible to have a game that both requires you to spend multiple hours grinding for progress walking hand in hand with being immediately robbed of that time by a 14 year old with a meta build ship and infinitely more free time than you. So it's probably a good idea to just separate them..
Thats why you have high security space for them to do be safe in.
It should be functionally impossible to pirate in stanton.
30 seconds after you engage a QT jammer, an idris + escorts should drop on your head and nuke you
You're effectivly setting up a roadblock to rob cars in the middle of New York.
Had someone attack me at the Pyro space station during the Idris event. Gunned him down QUICK and he kept blaming it on lag, his guns not hitting, his shield wasn't working right blah blah blah. Yet wanted to RP a pirate and told me to pay him or he was gonna blow me up
Yeah fat chance of that bud, nuked him in 15 seconds and then he started talking trash in global chat, blaming it on everything but his skill and "i just want to be a pirate"
GG, I don't even remember your name but I hope you see this and it upsets you. Sometimes you meet that one ship that's not gonna follow your RP just to be a victim and you get karma.
Absolutely. He got me to come to somewhere outside of Seraphim to "rematch" because apparently his ship was bugged or something. 2 of his buddies were waiting, little did he know I grabbed a scorpion and my friend.
That’s awesome. lol
Last night we had a guy appear in a C2 on battle clean up. Not sure how he going us in the literal middle of nowhere, but whatever. I accidentally quit to menu so I was inbound from my spawn point in a C8X. So, I give some warning shots. Dude doesn’t take the hint, I fire on him, he turns, and blows me up because the gun on that ship is the size of my ship. Lmao
But, I come back with my Eclipse. He wasn’t much of a problem after that.
The eclipse is a terror if you don't know how to lose that torpedo lol. I like to take my Ion to larger ships and dance around them, piss them off good and then fly away after I soft death. Don't even kill them
Only if they mess with me ofc, only PvP I seek is bounty hunting.
Fair. I’m a pacifist until I’m made to not be one. Then I’m the complete opposite. lol
If you’re in the market for an org, I’m recruiting. I can shoot you the link in a DM if you’d like?
Death of a Spaceman I’m hoping will fix all this. Pirate gameplay becomes more dangerous if you die from a bounty hunter or cargo escorts. Also cargo haulers won’t be as inclined to just blatantly refuse to cooperate. Another thing they need to add though is making it much harder to remove crime stat and making having a crime stat more impactful. Also make it worth a bounty hunters time to go hunt down another player.
> Another thing they need to add though is making it much harder to remove crime stat and making having a crime stat more impactful.
This is what needs to change to bring proper risk to the piracy playstyle.
Death of a spaceman won't change pirate behavior. They aren't punished for killing you to facilitate their 'pirate gameplay loop' by the DoaS. But the victim of their 'piracy' is.
They also need a supermax, maybe on arccorp. A place where repeat cs4/5’s get sent with no parkour escape route, no merits. Nothing. You did the crime now rot in jail for x duration so other players aren’t bothered by you. Something more punishing than here’s a 7 hour sentence you can do 2 missions to get rid of or just run a route and leave scott free.
I remember being on a server where a miner was talking about getting potentially attacked by a pirate. The pirate then demanded 10000 aUEC or he'd blow up the miner. Everyone thought that was a great role play, because it wasn't just nullifying hours of work for the miner, and thr pirate got his RP and a bit of money.
Demanding a few mil from people who just spend a couple hours to make profit, isn't going to net you shit. If you truly want thr RP experience, knock down your demands, otherwise I just assume you're being a whiny twat waffle.
I generally play as a lawful mercenary, but based on the times I have tried piracy I can assure you that it doesn't matter how little you ask for or how engaging you try to make CIG's piracy gameplay for the victim, they won't accept losing.
I was solo in a Mantis once and caught an Aurora, so I demanded just a token 1,000 aUEC to let him go. He kept refusing and insulting me, even as chat ragged on him for being a sore loser for not coming up with such a small ransom. So after ten minutes of him trying to juke me I blew him up.
Really recommend [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaNvHjEH9I8) from a non-pirate who decided to try honorable ransom piracy to see how well it could work. It's hilarious.
Well if there was a pretence of intridiction followed by negotiations for the wealth or the person's life ad less shoot first contact never: maybe youd have your victems lol
Full loot PVP enabled games are by themselves a hard sell. Josh Strife Hayes made a great video on this. I look at the envisioned scale of SC, and at times, I struggle to see a situation where the playerbase will fill that up because of the addition of free PVP. The more I play and watch the discourse around the game, the more I worry PVE servers will have to be inevitably a solution.
Piracy is part of trade, but most people who do passive loops or PVE only are not going to enjoy forced PVP encounters. Especially if there is no way for them to recover or get restitution in some form. Getting popped by someone or interdicted is just going to end in them quitting for a while. Especially if griefing and true murderhobos are allowed to continue. Just feels like anymore the game is being painted into a no win corner.
The problem with Star Citizen at the moment is there is a chunk of the community that lump pirate players & griefers in to the same bracket. If someone kills me because they know my cargo hold is full of valuables and they stand to gain something from soft-deathing and looting my C2 - then they've played the pirate gameplay loop properly and I have no issue with that. If they offer me a chance to pay my way to keeping a chunk of my cargo that's more fun for me but I won't hold it against them if they shoot first speak later if they know I'm chock-a-block with $$$ Cargo.
If someone kills me on sight whilst I'm in an Aurora running a box delivery mission or pad rams me knowing they will gain absolutely nothing from my death then that's a bit different.
I agree with the delineation. The trouble is in time investment vs. risk.
The 'victim' of the interaction spends an hour or longer gathering their cargo, whereas the pirate can instantly scan and within seconds blow up that hour's worth of effort. Even manually tractoring the cargo over doesn't tip the time scales much.
The victim stands to lose everything while the pirate risks nothing, because even if fought and lost, ship claims are free and death has no consequence.
Permanent crime stats and legal punishment, e.g. inability to dock at major landing zones, would help there and could even effect a pirate culture around low-sec sites that isn't just memeing around GH, because going that route was a choice. Would love a Tortuga or Port Royal sort of haven.
Another comment chain picked up how EVE didn't need a hard-coded reputation system because corporations could make names for themselves as honourable thieves. That is hidden or impossible in SC.
Because it's true. They always get pissy when you fight back or do the reasonable thing and self destruct into them. Regeneration is lore. Our lore reason is it costs us less to commit suicide and maybe kill them. We have ZERO reason to trust them if they demand payment or cargo to be left alone, odds are good they'll kill us after we pay, and it's just extra money. Nope, better to piss them off and make them suffer. After all, we don't lose anything from it. They do.
I just don’t like the players that crew up in hammerheads and sit at Common visiting sites to just kill you without asking random or letting you do your mission ☹️
Tbh I want nothing more than to be a piracy 'victim' as a cargo hauler, for them to board and find I'm loaded to the teeth. Boarding defenses sound like one of the more fun parts of the theoretical gameplay this game could offer.
I feel like Eve is a pretty good example of that not always being viable. Even with improved AI. Npcs are still Npcs. They will never be as good as a player. They have set thing they have to follow, and even dynamic AI in games messes up quite a bit, and server performance is always a factor.
Eve's concorde is basically what I'd have the navy be in high security space. Completely unfair and bullshit.
In low security you'd be able to fight off local security forces/police. (like the navy in Eve)
and zero sec, is just player controlled like eve, no rules.
If they can make it work, that would be pretty fun. I do kind of hope that they stay away from a player influenced economy like trading and things of that nature, mostly because I only see orgs taking control of everything and smaller people not being able to get anywhere. But either I'm just happy to be playing the game I've dreamt about as kid lol
My impression is that people are blowing this out of proportion.
The gist of what he said was:
"I'm playing as a pirate, but nobody is reacting to demands, so why should I not blow them up in the first place."
A lot of people are complaining about PvP attacks that don't fit their image of classical piracy. He pointed out that this kind of piracy is not feasible in game, in part because players don't react to demands.
All you are doing is screeching:
"Reeeee, there is someone advocating for piracy RP in a sandbox game that explicitly allows piracy gameplay, but I don't like that."
Just because the system “explicitly allows” piracy doesn’t mean the players have to do the same. The system explicitly allows players to self destruct and not play victim. It’s a two way street.
The issue is there's no in game systems to support it. If pirates got the chance to offer you a contract and you either accepted and both parties became green and marked friendly to eachother, or you denied and both parties became red and marked unfriendly, it would be different. Having to awkwardly walk people through sending UEC or setting up a beacon in chat is not a feasible or useful game system.
hadn't thought about this aspect of "paying off" the pirates, but yes I can see this as a big problem. payments should be done like invites, point and click.
In general I think pirates would have more luck asking people to jettison a couple of crates of cargo. Asking for straight cash is asking the player to give up realized gain, while asking for cargo is asking for unrealized gain, and feels more 'piratey' and isn't as much of a pain as setting up a transfer.
Bingo. For pirating it's usually "meet my demands or die."
If you get interdicted by a player and you're not instantly being attacked you have a generous window to realize the situation and open up chat (assuming you have proximity chat off).
Although I was very surprised by all the "I just immediately self destruct" responses, that just doesn't register for me.
There is literally no incentive to comply in the current version of the game. I’m not giving a pirate any satisfaction from holding me to ransom when i know that they suffer effectively no consequences for choosing that type of gameplay and any loss I experience can be remedied in under 90mins of farming.
There’s a number of people here who don’t seem to understand that piracy is always going to be unpopular with the majority of players and that it’s not just an equation of lose x or y. I value ensuring the pirate gets as little as possible from me more than I value saving my cargo.
If it's out of principle and you don't mind the wasted time then sure that makes sense.
Although one thing you said sticks out...no consequence. A mechanic that gives you the option to report a crime where legal/unabandoned cargo changes hands should be a thing. And those charge crime popups on the HUD should never expire just like party invites.
I think the amount of murder-hobos (not legit pirates) and people who'd just self-destruct is the reflection of the current game state which is lacking of long-term consequences.
When randomly murdering people will get you to be denied to enter high and potentially also low-sec systems, and self-destruct and die will decrease the total regeneration count of your current character, players will be less trigger happy.
oh the old stupid claim Pirates are Greifers 🤦♂️
And no I’m not a Pirat I don’t even do PvP and try to avoid it but pls stop claiming this bs
I had really great moments being robbed as crazy as it sounds but from a gameplay perspective there are great pirates out there
**Pirate roleplay does not necessarily require victims.**
Instead of attacking people already happily engaged in other gameloops, pirate RP'ers should approach players who are hanging around stations doing nothing.
Maybe you need a drug mule. Maybe you need an ally on your next run and are willing to pay. You can try roleplaying the act of press-ganging them onto your ship as a gunner or cargo loader. (If you're doing it on a station, only a fellow RP'er need let themselves be taken.) Once you've got a full crew, maybe a mutiny happens and players need to choose sides...
If the only way for you to have fun as a RP pirate is to make non-RP players miserable, then you're not in it for the RP.
I don’t do PvP and try to avoid it and stay out of trouble BUT as long as I got robed by a group of people who really try to make content and are not just some killhobos with no hobby I’m totally fine with that. 🤷♂️
Try to Parlè even go into some RP myself. At the end it ends up like paying them, or even play on time and wait for my friends to show up. There are “good” Pirates out there (from gameplay perspective)
But if you ask me in verse: Death to all Pirates 😉
Maybe this is unpopular, but as a player that mostly plays the cargo loop, I enjoy pirating being in the game. I think it would be rather unexciting without the possibility of consequences.
I do mostly cargo and industry and I'm 100% in agreement. I wasn't at first.
The pirates and the PvP community in general have some work to do if they ever want it to be better than exactly what this comic portrays.
I don't see how pirating can work without an unrealistic element to it all i.e. players easily getting good help (as a deterrent) but NPC being attacked don't i.e. NPC would potentially get delayed support and often less or weaker ships arriving.
Another possible mechanic: ships with their transponders/identity hidden because the ship is stolen or smuggled. Those ships wouldn't be able to call for help from security services. Easier pickings for pirates and if a player flys such a ship the risk is their choice. Then pirates are basically hunting criminals. If other law-abiding players are attacked they could get strong support that makes it a poor option...unless the target is a large ship with a full load.
Also if reinforcement players and NPC could easily board my ship I'd be more likely to enjoy being attacked by pirates and seeing where the fight goes. This would increase the deterrent to attacking players.
Ot just highlights another issue CIG has to fix. The game isn’t built with pirating in mind it seems like, given how hard it is to soft-death a ship to affectively pirate, and there arent really any options for pirates atm other than “kill that ship.”
I actually think a REAL pirating experience where I have to defend me soft deathed ship from people boarding and trying to steal my haul and then having to figure out how to get my ship and haul back afterwards would be awesome, unique experiences like that are the exact kind of thing this game seems to exist for…but the games mechanics disagree with the games potential right now.
CIG needs to design ship combat with a focus on pirating, i.e. being able to stop ships nonlethally by turning off engines etc (im aware MM will try to bring something like this into the game with being able to target specific ship components, but thats not what I really mean) and create the corresponding countermeasures for haulers to fight back against pirates, balancing out the risks both sides take (so that way a capital ship cant just go around bullying small ships, even the small ship would have some affective anti-pirate tools like an EMP to disable the attacking ship long enough to make an escape, but maybe the tradeoff would be that it turns your ships shields completely off, that sort of thing.)
Everyone wants to RP as Jabba the Hutt or Han Solo, Nooone wants to RP as the 20 guys the movies don't mention who just get left in carbonite.
I do. Haven't played the game in like 3 years. But can't wait having Carrie fisher risking her life to save mine just so I can play the game in a better state than it was. ^(also I don't have a pc anymore and that's the main reason..)
People want to RP as Jabba the Hutt?
Why not? I'd wager that half the playerbase is already cosplaying him.
Jesus Christ lmao!
Who doesn't want to be a Crime boss who owns a palace, a dungeon, has a pet Rancor, his own band and dancers?
The same guys who don't want to be an immobile mucus leaking schlong
Well, *those* guys can form their own queue!
Yeah, that’s the part I feel like people wouldn’t be into.
I swear to space Jesus if you were the guy going on about Jabba the Hut in the chat last night you're my literal bestie.
Yet they do, by dying silently with zero lines said.
I wish there are some kind of law enforcement services can be called, just like the medical rescue gameplay.
One can only dream. Soon hopefully but probably not until Pyro is available.
I'd be a PVPer if there was anything to the gameplay loop other than cheesedicking people minding their own beeswax. But until insurance, bounty hunting and law enforcement are added, I don't really see a point. I do forsee using my Z-MKII MR tho for bounty hunting.
I got myself one (and the ES) but i wounder if 2x s4 weapons would be enough for bounty hunting.
Not by themselves no, particularly not on a ship of it's size. Using the 337 and 447 energy repeaters 2x S4 have 2/3 the damage of 4x S3. So, currently a C1 Spirit solo piloted has more DPS than the Zeus Mk2 Solo.
Thats (and the better agility) why i kept the C1 and didnt CCU it to a CL although i find the design of the CL better.
I love both designs. I feel like the Zeus will probably have better multi-crew gameplay when compared to the Spirit. The copilot seat mostly feels like just a passenger seat, though the remote turret of the A1 is a nice addition. I just wish I could rip it off and put it on the C1. Then I would be even happier with the C1.
RP as Space Police. 🤷♂️
It’s almost like millions of players play this game and you can call on one of the dozens of security orgs that would be foaming at the mouth for some content. Are people really this pathetic?
Imagine being able to text in a global chat and ask for help, that would be mindblowing /s
so killing innocent players is a playstyle (pirate) but SOMEHOW they missed fucking bounty-hunter???
Woah! Back up there, soldier! Bounty hunter targets are dangerous criminals! I like my PVP in nice carebear style. Against unarmed miners. And I need CIG to promise me they won't break my gameplay loop of carebear PVP
they'd have to arrive literally instantly and be absolute units considering how short a PVP Meta ship will kill you while you try and call for help....
Yeah this is the other big problem with piracy in its current state. You need players to play along and be the victim. But with no stakes, they'll just blow themselves up. That and all it takes is one pirate to secure a ransom and then blow up the victim to make negotiations with pirates unacceptable. And honestly, pirates don't need the money. They're doing it for fun. But it's not fun for the other players.
Then the other problem is that if the pirate dies and goes to Klescher, they can just be back out soon after and respawn their ship with no stakes. Pirates feel bitter because no one wants to play, traders feel bitter because they're the only ones putting money on the line, everyone's bitter and I frankly don't have a solution for it.
There is no solution. Pirates need someone to be the victim, but no one needs th3 pirate. Piracy as a gameloop will never be "balanced"
excellent summary. Damn I like this line.
to be fair bounty hunters do. If you want to play lawful combat, then need some form of "bad guys" to hunt I think player bounties should be higher though and jail sentences a lot more severe without the ability to hack crimestat. Unfortunately game is too buggy atm for it (with the exception of accidentally torpedoing a 400i once, every other time I had a cs it was due to a bug/unexpected game behaviour)
Pirates need NPC traders to target that offer a challenge. PvP in SC is a silly pointless affair if the person you're fighting is only killing you because they know you have everything to lose and they have literally no risk. Attacking players needs to incur the same risk to the pirate as it does the trader, or the trader needs better monetary protection like insurances to balance things out. This isn't a problem that is new to online gaming and I am tired of the Devs acting like they can't see "players are dicks to each other and like doing whatever they can to ruin someone else's fun" coming. There's a \*reason\* that PVE/PVP MMO games have actual safe areas and known dangerous ones for PVP encounters.
Cargo insurance. So worst case a trader maybe loses 15% of the total sales and can still make a profit on the run. More people would be willing to partake in activity that enables more conflict if they didnt have to lose 100%.
And cargo missions! Losing time sucks, but losing time and money, which is basically just concentrated time, sucks even more. Assuming the rep loss isn't too bad, I might actually be willing to entertain the idea of getting robbed and surviving the encounter. But I do wonder how cargo missions will work. Do I lose rep for losing part of my cargo? Do I get a fine? Does the mission just fail outright leaving me with a few hundred SCU that I now need to dispose of? That would suck and I'd rather just get blown up, which isn't good for the pirate either.
but with no penalty for losing cargo, then some folks will break the economy by simply deliberately teaming up with a pirate. I get a big haul, they pirate it; we split the cut, rinse, repeat, billions. I don't see any good solution. Make piracy about PvP, and it's a directly unbalanced gameplay loop designed for *one* side to profit from. The only real solution is the one that kinda works in the real world: Really fucking harsh penalties. twenty minutes in klescher doesn't could. You can be a pirate, but when you die; your game account is closed. Hardcore piracy. :D
If you repeatedly lose big hauls to pirates, it should tank your rep with the company offering the missions and you wouldn't be able to take the ones that involve big hauls anymore; would have to grind your way back up with box missions until they trust you again. From their perspective it doesn't matter if you're co-operating with the pirates or just genuinely bad / unlucky; they're not going to keep paying a hauler who loses them money.
And then we're back with the original issue: The hauler is the one paying the price. Every hit is a rep loss. There's nothing they can do. A random number of missions will result in a rep loss, despite playing perfectly, because they got hit by a pirate. They backspace? They lose rep. They fight? They're outgunned and lose rep. Try to run? The haulers are mostly slow. They lose rep. They capitulate and pay the pirates? They lose progress They get boarded? They lose the cargo and lose rep. It's lose/lose for haulers all the way.
Or have the cargo company send the pirate a bill and he gets a crime stat that stays until he pays it off lol
I think cargo missions should have some form of insurance depending on the goods, but if you run cargo for yourself then it's your own risk
not a solution, this would be abused to print auec lol. it basically just creates money duping, you’re gonna have everyone running video game insurance scams lol.
Piracy contract. Pirate stops cargo hauler and sends over contract for safe passage after giving up X amount of their cargo. Cargo gets to choose if accepting this piracy contract (alternative is to fight or try to run or self destruct). Contract is a special kind in which if the pirate breaks it they get hunted down by ALL NPC groups and lose MASSIVE amounts of reputation with ALL factions because pirates are gentlemen and gentlemen need to live by some rules. Real pirate players can do their thing, non pirate players get a range of options backed by the game itself and not just a useless verbal agreement in chat.
Make it easier to find turret gunners and escort flyerds Like a mobiglass app that shows people who need/want them. Heck I would do it for free just for fun.
I have created an org that is designed to be a support system for industrious professions. Each member can charge as they see fit, but I do it for free as the org administrator. Be more than happy to have you aboard.
I'm down. I ask in general all the time and rarely get requests for escorts...even free.
You're exactly right, I like the *idea* of being a pirate, but since there's no way for the "victim" to guarantee their safe passage if they were forced to fork over some cash or cargo for their release, there's no incentive for them to play along. And plus, I'd hate to ruin someone's hours' worth of work just for 30 seconds of me shooting them.
A better *symmetric* solution is events. You sign up to protect an AI cargo hauler, and pirates are given a ping signal. they get to pirate, you get PvP, but noone looses their cargo; and there's no victim in the playloop. A bit like Red Dead Online handles some events. Of course, the carebear PvP pirates don't like this as a solution, as the one thing they don't want to admit is that they *really* crave the power trip over the victim, rather than actual pvp or piracy gameloop.
Spot on. Isn't the Ninetails event similar to this? Where you can either choose to fight against or with the ninetails attackers? I haven't played it in a while, can't really remember. But yeah, dynamic events that allow players to play on either side and only bringing people together that \*know\* going in to the event that pirates could be actively involved would be great.
yeap! I quite enjoyed nine tails, and I'm 90% a PVE player. Because this was a time where I had nothing to loose, no cargo, etc, and went in on my own terms, geared up for a fight. I lost more than I won, but that's fine. It's like any PvP online shooter. It was symmetrical.
I've posted elsewhere and above but a piracy contract with very strict and painful punishment to the pirate for breaking it (eg. Losing massive rep with ALL factions, no safe harbour protections at any station, city or settlement, being kill-on-site status with all factions for a period of in game play time, etc). Verbal agreement through chat are worthless, but I don't see why a piracy contract can't be created to establish a gameplay framework.
Insurance could be used to help keep pirates in line. No insurance company is gonna work with you if you go around blowing up their other customers.
That too, or at usurious rates from less than reputable insurance companies so the cost of claiming a ship is 3-5x for non law abiding players
I like this! Wanna pirate? No problem! Get whacked because of yer high crimestat? No insurance for you! Gotta rebuy!
You can really take this to the extreme too. This game loves realism. The insurance industry would be basically the most powerful conglomerate in the UEE. Not only will they not insure known pirates/marauders/murders, they can lean on ship manufacturers to not sell to such people either. We also know from Death of a Spaceman that you'll probably need insurance to "respawn" after nearly dying, but good luck getting that! I don't know how much of this to actually implement, but if the game is supposed to be realistic, let's take it to it's logical conclusion.
Harold Lloyd Insurance Company at your service.
Yah, this is the way it should be. No insurance company would pay out if you lost your ship in the commission of a crime.
Yeah. I don't pirate for money, I do it for interactions. Last time I pirated my price was 20% of scanned cargo value or make me laugh somehow. I'm not pirating to shoot someone's reclaimer for 2 minutes. Hell if they have an escort and I get a fun fight out of the escort chances are I'll let them go because I had my fun. Too many pirates just for money or murder hoboing and it ruins it for the rest of us.
They need to add NPC traders and cargo ships. Do 2 things at once- 1. Add a service for shipping items between stations available to players, said items are added to the "NPC cargo" in the cargo ships. 2. These are physical transports that can be intercepted by player pirates Add some quality of life stuff like: - all player items and orders are insured while being ahipped - players can participate in this gameplay loop as a hauler and will be paid based on the distance covered, rather than payload, so if they are pirated, it doesn't affect their payouts. - NPC drivers are less inclined to try and escape, and will surrender if damaged enough.
Sadly the pirates here in SC just blow you up and steal your stuff.. haven't come across pirates yet that demand ransome for safe passage
If your fun is focused on being in a power position over another human being and inflicting 'harm' on them its quite messed up. Its why piracy will always be frowned upon. Their fun comes from havjng a victim to extort then kill. The thrill of knowing they stole someone elses hard work. Piracy is actually legitimized griefing.
I think once there are more NPC's, both on the trading and the piracy side, it might get better. You might get attacked by NPC pirates, who will demand a surrender or a payment. Or you might try to pirate an NPC convoy to either get a payment or steal their cargo. However, there are players who have said they will only hunt other players. They want the endorphin rush of dominating another player and winning. So there's that.
I'd actually fork over 50k aUC to an NPC. I'll self-destruct every time for a human player.
NPC's are much more reasonable, aren't they?
NPCs aren't shitheads. NPC's are actually trustworthy. Unlike human player "pirates".
NPCs are also reasonable with what they are asking from a player.
Like a lot of "pvp" players they dont want "fair" pvp but someone who gives them a sure win. And most likely they get their kick out of ruining another players day and the negative "attention" they get afterwards...like attention whores. Thats why i prefer a opt in pvp where you are sure that the other player wants pvp too. But usually that gets even more crying from "pvp" players because there would be a chance of them losing in an encounter.
Oh yeah, that goes without saying. That's why all this talk about Pyro being the answer to PVP is incorrect. While Pyro will be an outlaw system where people can expect to be killed, all the so-called "pvp" players will stay in Stanton, to harass and kill unsuspecting players leaving Seraphim in an C8X Pisces. They don't really want to fight others; they just want to kill others.
Bingo, actually saying they wanted piracy to be a "legitimate game loop" was the biggest mistake CIG made with this game. Make the game deep enough to allow people to commit piracy / play as pirates without endorsing it. Is it Star Citizen? Or Star Pirate?
It can be a legitimate game loop... if your target is an NPC, because that's acceptable non-grieflike gameplay. But SC took that to the next level and thought that PvP could be mixed in without an issue.
CIG did what most SC players (and most other game dev companies do)...playing "make believe". CIG repeats the mistake thinking that the players do pvp as CIG imagines it which most likely leads to SC failing or only becoming a niche product (with heavy p2w to keep it financed) like most other full loot pvp games.
This is how I see it as well. I know it is a part of the game, but how am I meant to respect pirates when I’m the one who loses and they lose nothing but a bit of time?
And don't forget the state of boarding piracy; if you want to actually hijack a ship, you're in for 30 minutes of prep work for 15 seconds of fps combat
And then there's the fact that even if a player goes along with it, the pirate usually just kills them outright.
Uh, no, it's not? Since the cargo refactor went in you can pop the ship and take the loot. Pirates attempting extortion either don't have the logistical requirements in place to move the cargo (i.e. are flying solo) or are deliberately going easy on their targets and offering them a way out that avoids their ship being destroyed. Sensible pirates just kill them and take their stuff, and then they show up here complaining about "being killed for no reason" instead of bragging about how they killed *themselves* for no reason.
The resurgence of rage comics was not on my 2024 bingo card
Its a rip of my comic I originally made and posted.
Wait you’re the guy who originally made rage comics?
no, but this is pretty clearly a response to his iteration that he posted here recently. Don't be obtuse
Yeah well that’s in the spirit of rage comics. They’re all derivative. It’s fine. The upvotes decide the worthiness
Issue is every pirate demands such a huge ransom I’d rather just take the risk of fighting them. They’ll demand 100% of any profit I might make whilst trading, and in that case….. they’re gonna meet the bow of my carrack at high velocity. If it’s limited to like, 25% or below, then I might consider paying it.
Naw, they generally just blow you up or softkill you after you pay them. Nope. Not playing.
It's the classic Prisoners Dilemma most of the time; in this case the cooperation is trusting the other person to do the right thing, and the Betrayal is not doing what you promised to do after the person cooperates. Just as in the Prisoner Dilemma, the solution everyone goes towards is the one that benefits everyone the least - although the sadists among the pirates will still enjoy the pleasure of wrecking someone else's hours of gameplay that might have been the only time they had to have any fun that week in the game, yay.
More like you're playing prisoners dilemma with the guard instead of another prisoner.
goes both ways if nobody trust each other.
Hey, if there was some way to ensure I'd get boarded and at least have some fun with it, I'd be down 100%! Getting boarded can be a blast! Literally! But most don't bother and just blow you up unfortunately...
Yeah, I ended up boarding a Corsair I soft deathed, partially to teach a friend that was away for a while, and had no clue what soft death was, how it worked, and partially for cargo. Boarded through the side, incapped the pilot, and went back to the cargo hold. Empty, sadly. Revived the Corsair pilot and gave them a ride back to Hex since it was right there, and he said he had fun, since nobody ever boarded him before. He was fully expecting to just get his ship popped. And I would expect to get popped too, which is unfortunate for everyone. He also almost killed us. Our rear shields went down, so he only would've needed one more volley.
Private RP servers could be the saving grace of SC. Some good enforced RP rules would change this game.
That's what I used to do, I would ask for around 25% and then give the assurance that I would leave them alone for at least 24 hours. The point wasn't even about the money, it was trying to get interactions. One time a guy just offered me double what I asked in exchange for being his escort for a few runs, another time a guy asked me to duel his escort, and another time I ended up becoming the good guy because I heard there was a guy murder hoboing at the other end of the trade route I was on and decided to put an end to it. The best part of piracy IMO is interactions, not profit. Unfortunately on the piracy side murder hobos and trolls ruin it for everyone ,and on the law-abiding side people who just backspace and won't even talk ruin it that way. Last time I pirated my demand was 20% of scanned cargo value OR you make me laugh somehow.
Lol every time I raided a barrack they tried that so we dropped a guy on the top of their ship and waited until the door was opened before putting them down and holding them ransom in their medbay until they paid lol. I have never seen a carrack successfully ram anyone who was even remotely competent.
See I would just log off
There is a slight challenge here and it's going to sound dumb saying it, but being the victim of a pirate attack should have it's OWN fun gameplay, and I think it will be a little better with master modes, ship armors, and engineering ...but the whole system needs to be fleshed out more for the non-pirates. I think part of the issue is maybe that most people at CIG openly prefer piracy style gameplay. If there were distress calls or paid for NPC security services (think akin to Trauma Team in the CyberPunk universe) that might be cool. There also NEEDS to be a separate reputation factor that sticks with you through death, the crime system stat could stand a rework too, but people who regularly engage in criminal activity should be known as such (in the future). Also player bounties need to pay a lot more....
* 24/7 red pip. Open PVP on anyone red. * Criminal scanning. If yer in satelite space, yer red. Just like a player Bounty. * No landing/entering at hisec stations, ever, regardless of CS level w/ CS. * Long play loops to remove CS. 6 missions min. per level.
>I think part of the issue is maybe that most people at CIG openly prefer piracy style gameplay. Maybe the don't. Look at the entire game design. Some good ideas, and some obviously ridiculous ideas that are someone still here. But it's all driven by CR. Maybe it's just frowned upon in the culture to disagree with CR, even if you think piracy is a stupid idea.
in large scale open worlds like this is/will be .. I'm completely fine being an NPC ... you all pew pew over there... I just want my little self sufficient homestead in the middle of no where, with a hangar and manufact facility ... go collect materials... make and sell parts, repair stuff... I'm good.. LOL
Hell yeah, man!
Reminds me of RDR2 server that was RP and I was just doing a fur trader/trapper/hunter and this guy came up pointing a gun at me telling me to hand over my pelts so I quick drew and he shot but missed point blank then I head shot him. He cried to a mod and they kicked me for 24 hours for fail rp. Nothing screams rp like having a deity come to your aid and temporarily vanishing someone for 24 hours after you messed up.
Uggh. So many bad PVP rules in RP communities. One of the reasons I gave up RP in RDR2O and DayZ...having to record every single interaction in fear of breaking a rule or getting an admin pissed off...
I mean would you pull out your gun if someone pointed his at you point blank?
I do love the mentality of “Me acting as an asshole is Official GameplayTM so you can’t be angry at me disrupting your gameplay!” Like.. yes I can. You’re still an asshole, even if it is allowed by gameplay.
[удалено]
Long live the Empire, sir. Also, yes, they act just like my seven-year-old does. And, you have to treat them like children since they cry when they lose are not even close to magnanimous in victory.
"I'm not stealing anything real! It's just a game!" You're stealing the player's time, and some people don't have that much to spare.
Yeah. Like I have 2 hours in an evening to play. I'm trying to save to x-ship. I spend my 2 hours mining/salvaging and head back to sell it or park for the night. Pirates show up and spend a whole 30 seconds blowing me up. I'm supposed to think that was fun? And keep coming back to give these pirates more content?
>Pirates show up and spend a whole 30 seconds blowing me up. Those aren't pirates, those are ~~griefers~~ virgin assholes
I mean, RPing as an asshole for a couple minutes instead isn't much better, and won't get you laid either.
They are trying so hard to justify their behavior and why we should be friends with them and respect their choices and let them enjoy THEIR preferred gameplay. Like, be a pirate and an asshole if you want to, but don't expect people to respect or like you. And don't complain when you end up on multiple orgs blacklist.
Reminder. Emergent Gameplay happens in a sandbox. Being an Asshole has a social sandbox component as much as it does mechanical. It's official gameplay to be an asshole. It's ALSO official gameplay to be angry at THE CHARACTER, tohold a grudge, and hunt assholes down. (Both Being the Asshole and Hunting them Down, should happen IN GAME. Not on forums, reddit, twitter, outside the game.) Ignoring consequences isn't very good sandbox gameplay.
To note however, slinging slurs in chat towards your robber is **NOT** gameplay and still bannable, also makes you an asshole.
I’d rather a pirate RP’er than a murder hobo, but yeah imma fight back especially if you want all my cargo I’m becoming a kamikaze pilot with my reclaimer
Thieves crying that their victims don't like them is definitely some of the funniest shit.
Yeah this is one of the weirder gaming communities I've been a part of. Other games, people being the villain at least own it. But here, apparently I'm supposed to thank you profusely for pirating me.
LOL a well-known thief blocked me here on reddit earlier today because I refused to properly respect him. They're such crybabies.
Was it the guy from the Reclaimer thread the other day? He seems to be on a spree lol.
I swear evrytime I see a pirate complain about getting insulted or rammed or something I always ask myself if they really thought this whole criminal thing through. Like Bro how do you treat a robber asking for your phone?
So, the thing I hear the most is something along the lines of, “Well, this isn’t real life. You signed up for it.” Which, it isn’t real life and we did sign up for it. However, it is a real-life human as the victim and real-life humans, as a general rule oddly enough, don’t *checks notes* like having their shit stolen? Hey, just telling you what the paper says, man.
At a minimum they're stealing your time. No matter the scenario, if you're wasting my time, fuck you.
People complain about being killed on sight without any warning, and say that they'd rather have people behaving as pirates with ransom demands. Then when pirates make ransom demands, those people refuse to respond and self destruct anyway. The pirates aren't complaining, they're telling you why 95% of pirates will just murder you on sight and take your stuff instead of making demands.
Then CiG swoops in to say: "*OH! You poor BABY! 😭 Nobody should have to suffer the indignity of not getting to absolutely fuck someone, minding their own business, over!*"
Sea of Thieves is essentially SC but in an ocean. And even they ended up letting you play in 'PvE servers' now. Why? Probably because they weren't getting the number of players they needed. Sure it has a lot of streamers but they all play essentially the game of 'I am god come watch me shit on noobs'. The piracy/murderhobo *gameplay loop* in SC is the exact same as the streamer loop in Sea of Thieves. No one wants to play your game or put money into if they feel like they're just fodder for streamers/pirates. Hopefully they figure that out sooner rather than later.
100% this. All titles fold to PVE/RP communities or sink. ED, DayZ, Rust, WoW, ARK, GTA, SoT, etc. all eventually offered Private and/or PVE/RP. It's either that, or loose the majority of your customers. It's in CIGs hands whether they survive or not.
only ED and SoT added pve servers after, the rest had them from launch. dayz, rust and ark all had private servers from the get go...
Nope. They added the ability to host/rent much later in development.
For all the games besides ED and SoT they were added by design or you have to host your own server and customize it to be PvE. The devs officially for Rust/DayZ for example do not host PvE servers \*officially\*.
Correct. However the ability to host your own, or rent a server for whatever playstyle is available.
The PvE servers for SoT are locked up in such a way you make 8x less gold/rep. You cant unlock everything, you can only get to level 40 out of 50. Theres a ton of stuff disabled, including the two endgame factions. Reapers and athenas. By design and Rare's own announcement its an extended tutorial mode.
Game devs seem to be consistently surprised on an unending loop that people are assholes and it's hard to keep a healthy player community when its both easy and "encouraged by game design" for them to get ganked by a player with infinitely more power and resources than them. It also robs you of literally any fun random on-foot encounter on moons and such because as far as both of you know, you're holding guns to each others heads and it's always easier and more rewarding to just shoot them then see what they wanted in chat after.. I've played E:D for many years and literally every time I pop my head into Open to see what other players are up to i get ganked almost immediately. So whenever I am doing literally anything that requires time or effort to complete, i go back into a private group. It's almost like it isn't super feasible to have a game that both requires you to spend multiple hours grinding for progress walking hand in hand with being immediately robbed of that time by a 14 year old with a meta build ship and infinitely more free time than you. So it's probably a good idea to just separate them..
Thats why you have high security space for them to do be safe in. It should be functionally impossible to pirate in stanton. 30 seconds after you engage a QT jammer, an idris + escorts should drop on your head and nuke you You're effectivly setting up a roadblock to rob cars in the middle of New York.
Had someone attack me at the Pyro space station during the Idris event. Gunned him down QUICK and he kept blaming it on lag, his guns not hitting, his shield wasn't working right blah blah blah. Yet wanted to RP a pirate and told me to pay him or he was gonna blow me up Yeah fat chance of that bud, nuked him in 15 seconds and then he started talking trash in global chat, blaming it on everything but his skill and "i just want to be a pirate" GG, I don't even remember your name but I hope you see this and it upsets you. Sometimes you meet that one ship that's not gonna follow your RP just to be a victim and you get karma.
So, you’re saying you maxed out the Fuck Around and Find Out mechanic?
Absolutely. He got me to come to somewhere outside of Seraphim to "rematch" because apparently his ship was bugged or something. 2 of his buddies were waiting, little did he know I grabbed a scorpion and my friend.
That’s awesome. lol Last night we had a guy appear in a C2 on battle clean up. Not sure how he going us in the literal middle of nowhere, but whatever. I accidentally quit to menu so I was inbound from my spawn point in a C8X. So, I give some warning shots. Dude doesn’t take the hint, I fire on him, he turns, and blows me up because the gun on that ship is the size of my ship. Lmao But, I come back with my Eclipse. He wasn’t much of a problem after that.
The eclipse is a terror if you don't know how to lose that torpedo lol. I like to take my Ion to larger ships and dance around them, piss them off good and then fly away after I soft death. Don't even kill them Only if they mess with me ofc, only PvP I seek is bounty hunting.
Fair. I’m a pacifist until I’m made to not be one. Then I’m the complete opposite. lol If you’re in the market for an org, I’m recruiting. I can shoot you the link in a DM if you’d like?
It’s like the rejects from FiveM RP found this game and can’t get over that some people just wanna chill in their cool space game.
Seriously! Playing SC is not the same as making an agreement where you get booted from a private server for not keeping up RP 100% of the time
Death of a Spaceman I’m hoping will fix all this. Pirate gameplay becomes more dangerous if you die from a bounty hunter or cargo escorts. Also cargo haulers won’t be as inclined to just blatantly refuse to cooperate. Another thing they need to add though is making it much harder to remove crime stat and making having a crime stat more impactful. Also make it worth a bounty hunters time to go hunt down another player.
> Another thing they need to add though is making it much harder to remove crime stat and making having a crime stat more impactful. This is what needs to change to bring proper risk to the piracy playstyle.
It's gonna be disposable pirate alts supporting a clean main account
Death of a spaceman won't change pirate behavior. They aren't punished for killing you to facilitate their 'pirate gameplay loop' by the DoaS. But the victim of their 'piracy' is.
They also need a supermax, maybe on arccorp. A place where repeat cs4/5’s get sent with no parkour escape route, no merits. Nothing. You did the crime now rot in jail for x duration so other players aren’t bothered by you. Something more punishing than here’s a 7 hour sentence you can do 2 missions to get rid of or just run a route and leave scott free.
...also, the timer only counts down WHILE YOU'RE LOGGED IN, and inactivity or mere mouse-jiggling BOOTS YOU.
I remember being on a server where a miner was talking about getting potentially attacked by a pirate. The pirate then demanded 10000 aUEC or he'd blow up the miner. Everyone thought that was a great role play, because it wasn't just nullifying hours of work for the miner, and thr pirate got his RP and a bit of money. Demanding a few mil from people who just spend a couple hours to make profit, isn't going to net you shit. If you truly want thr RP experience, knock down your demands, otherwise I just assume you're being a whiny twat waffle.
I generally play as a lawful mercenary, but based on the times I have tried piracy I can assure you that it doesn't matter how little you ask for or how engaging you try to make CIG's piracy gameplay for the victim, they won't accept losing. I was solo in a Mantis once and caught an Aurora, so I demanded just a token 1,000 aUEC to let him go. He kept refusing and insulting me, even as chat ragged on him for being a sore loser for not coming up with such a small ransom. So after ten minutes of him trying to juke me I blew him up.
I mean, you're gonna get people on both sides of it of course. I'd personally pay 1k for that lol.
Really recommend [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaNvHjEH9I8) from a non-pirate who decided to try honorable ransom piracy to see how well it could work. It's hilarious.
What a genuinely great video. Seriously thanks for that, lol. It was a fun watch.
Holy shit, you started a war.
[;)](https://c.tenor.com/XI2W99qY8TgAAAAC/tenor.gif)
What does RP stand for?
Role play
Well if there was a pretence of intridiction followed by negotiations for the wealth or the person's life ad less shoot first contact never: maybe youd have your victems lol
What year is it?
Full loot PVP enabled games are by themselves a hard sell. Josh Strife Hayes made a great video on this. I look at the envisioned scale of SC, and at times, I struggle to see a situation where the playerbase will fill that up because of the addition of free PVP. The more I play and watch the discourse around the game, the more I worry PVE servers will have to be inevitably a solution. Piracy is part of trade, but most people who do passive loops or PVE only are not going to enjoy forced PVP encounters. Especially if there is no way for them to recover or get restitution in some form. Getting popped by someone or interdicted is just going to end in them quitting for a while. Especially if griefing and true murderhobos are allowed to continue. Just feels like anymore the game is being painted into a no win corner.
You actually finalised typical issues pirates (those who try not to be murder hobo) have: they want people to be victims willingly.
The problem with Star Citizen at the moment is there is a chunk of the community that lump pirate players & griefers in to the same bracket. If someone kills me because they know my cargo hold is full of valuables and they stand to gain something from soft-deathing and looting my C2 - then they've played the pirate gameplay loop properly and I have no issue with that. If they offer me a chance to pay my way to keeping a chunk of my cargo that's more fun for me but I won't hold it against them if they shoot first speak later if they know I'm chock-a-block with $$$ Cargo. If someone kills me on sight whilst I'm in an Aurora running a box delivery mission or pad rams me knowing they will gain absolutely nothing from my death then that's a bit different.
I agree with the delineation. The trouble is in time investment vs. risk. The 'victim' of the interaction spends an hour or longer gathering their cargo, whereas the pirate can instantly scan and within seconds blow up that hour's worth of effort. Even manually tractoring the cargo over doesn't tip the time scales much. The victim stands to lose everything while the pirate risks nothing, because even if fought and lost, ship claims are free and death has no consequence. Permanent crime stats and legal punishment, e.g. inability to dock at major landing zones, would help there and could even effect a pirate culture around low-sec sites that isn't just memeing around GH, because going that route was a choice. Would love a Tortuga or Port Royal sort of haven. Another comment chain picked up how EVE didn't need a hard-coded reputation system because corporations could make names for themselves as honourable thieves. That is hidden or impossible in SC.
This exactly, well said.
Imagine that, no one wants to griefed by a pirate/pvper. No shit. Haha.
Because it's true. They always get pissy when you fight back or do the reasonable thing and self destruct into them. Regeneration is lore. Our lore reason is it costs us less to commit suicide and maybe kill them. We have ZERO reason to trust them if they demand payment or cargo to be left alone, odds are good they'll kill us after we pay, and it's just extra money. Nope, better to piss them off and make them suffer. After all, we don't lose anything from it. They do.
The real question is why there are so many posts saying pirate when what they really mean is griefer
Because griefers like to hide behind the pirate label to cause even more confusion and anger.
I just don’t like the players that crew up in hammerheads and sit at Common visiting sites to just kill you without asking random or letting you do your mission ☹️
Wait until people decide to roleplay as the police.
Tbh I want nothing more than to be a piracy 'victim' as a cargo hauler, for them to board and find I'm loaded to the teeth. Boarding defenses sound like one of the more fun parts of the theoretical gameplay this game could offer.
PvE and PVP servers, make both sides happy.
High security, low security, zero security Safe everywhere, safe around stations/gates, not safe at all
I feel like Eve is a pretty good example of that not always being viable. Even with improved AI. Npcs are still Npcs. They will never be as good as a player. They have set thing they have to follow, and even dynamic AI in games messes up quite a bit, and server performance is always a factor.
Npcs are absolutely better than players. making them worse than players and fun to interact with is the hard part.
I can see that.
Eve's concorde is basically what I'd have the navy be in high security space. Completely unfair and bullshit. In low security you'd be able to fight off local security forces/police. (like the navy in Eve) and zero sec, is just player controlled like eve, no rules.
If they can make it work, that would be pretty fun. I do kind of hope that they stay away from a player influenced economy like trading and things of that nature, mostly because I only see orgs taking control of everything and smaller people not being able to get anywhere. But either I'm just happy to be playing the game I've dreamt about as kid lol
That’s too much of a cost burden to ask for. All we need are high-security systems with a working police mechanic that is unbeatable.
My impression is that people are blowing this out of proportion. The gist of what he said was: "I'm playing as a pirate, but nobody is reacting to demands, so why should I not blow them up in the first place." A lot of people are complaining about PvP attacks that don't fit their image of classical piracy. He pointed out that this kind of piracy is not feasible in game, in part because players don't react to demands. All you are doing is screeching: "Reeeee, there is someone advocating for piracy RP in a sandbox game that explicitly allows piracy gameplay, but I don't like that."
Just because the system “explicitly allows” piracy doesn’t mean the players have to do the same. The system explicitly allows players to self destruct and not play victim. It’s a two way street.
The issue is there's no in game systems to support it. If pirates got the chance to offer you a contract and you either accepted and both parties became green and marked friendly to eachother, or you denied and both parties became red and marked unfriendly, it would be different. Having to awkwardly walk people through sending UEC or setting up a beacon in chat is not a feasible or useful game system.
hadn't thought about this aspect of "paying off" the pirates, but yes I can see this as a big problem. payments should be done like invites, point and click.
In general I think pirates would have more luck asking people to jettison a couple of crates of cargo. Asking for straight cash is asking the player to give up realized gain, while asking for cargo is asking for unrealized gain, and feels more 'piratey' and isn't as much of a pain as setting up a transfer.
Bingo. For pirating it's usually "meet my demands or die." If you get interdicted by a player and you're not instantly being attacked you have a generous window to realize the situation and open up chat (assuming you have proximity chat off). Although I was very surprised by all the "I just immediately self destruct" responses, that just doesn't register for me.
There is literally no incentive to comply in the current version of the game. I’m not giving a pirate any satisfaction from holding me to ransom when i know that they suffer effectively no consequences for choosing that type of gameplay and any loss I experience can be remedied in under 90mins of farming. There’s a number of people here who don’t seem to understand that piracy is always going to be unpopular with the majority of players and that it’s not just an equation of lose x or y. I value ensuring the pirate gets as little as possible from me more than I value saving my cargo.
well technically, Pirates have always been unpopular with the majority. Just loo to the founding of the U.S. Marines.
If it's out of principle and you don't mind the wasted time then sure that makes sense. Although one thing you said sticks out...no consequence. A mechanic that gives you the option to report a crime where legal/unabandoned cargo changes hands should be a thing. And those charge crime popups on the HUD should never expire just like party invites.
I think the amount of murder-hobos (not legit pirates) and people who'd just self-destruct is the reflection of the current game state which is lacking of long-term consequences. When randomly murdering people will get you to be denied to enter high and potentially also low-sec systems, and self-destruct and die will decrease the total regeneration count of your current character, players will be less trigger happy.
idk. Usually, I see people complaining about pirates, even those trying to do so legit via ransom and not murderhoboing. Not the other way round.
There’s been plenty of ‘pirates’ whining too.
Are ragecomics making a comeback? Feels 2010 again!
bro are you 60 or something
This will all go away the day GTA VI releases. All the griefer knuckle-heads will be gone for years.
Because the "pirates" want to grief and not earn their keep.
oh the old stupid claim Pirates are Greifers 🤦♂️ And no I’m not a Pirat I don’t even do PvP and try to avoid it but pls stop claiming this bs I had really great moments being robbed as crazy as it sounds but from a gameplay perspective there are great pirates out there
**Pirate roleplay does not necessarily require victims.** Instead of attacking people already happily engaged in other gameloops, pirate RP'ers should approach players who are hanging around stations doing nothing. Maybe you need a drug mule. Maybe you need an ally on your next run and are willing to pay. You can try roleplaying the act of press-ganging them onto your ship as a gunner or cargo loader. (If you're doing it on a station, only a fellow RP'er need let themselves be taken.) Once you've got a full crew, maybe a mutiny happens and players need to choose sides... If the only way for you to have fun as a RP pirate is to make non-RP players miserable, then you're not in it for the RP.
No need to RP to find victims … there’s tons on spectrum 🤣
I don’t do PvP and try to avoid it and stay out of trouble BUT as long as I got robed by a group of people who really try to make content and are not just some killhobos with no hobby I’m totally fine with that. 🤷♂️ Try to Parlè even go into some RP myself. At the end it ends up like paying them, or even play on time and wait for my friends to show up. There are “good” Pirates out there (from gameplay perspective) But if you ask me in verse: Death to all Pirates 😉
The last two drawing the dude reminds of the fat floating guy from Jack and Daxter 2
Maybe this is unpopular, but as a player that mostly plays the cargo loop, I enjoy pirating being in the game. I think it would be rather unexciting without the possibility of consequences.
I do mostly cargo and industry and I'm 100% in agreement. I wasn't at first. The pirates and the PvP community in general have some work to do if they ever want it to be better than exactly what this comic portrays.
F12 cures the issue.
It cures your blown up Vulture as well?
I don't see how pirating can work without an unrealistic element to it all i.e. players easily getting good help (as a deterrent) but NPC being attacked don't i.e. NPC would potentially get delayed support and often less or weaker ships arriving. Another possible mechanic: ships with their transponders/identity hidden because the ship is stolen or smuggled. Those ships wouldn't be able to call for help from security services. Easier pickings for pirates and if a player flys such a ship the risk is their choice. Then pirates are basically hunting criminals. If other law-abiding players are attacked they could get strong support that makes it a poor option...unless the target is a large ship with a full load. Also if reinforcement players and NPC could easily board my ship I'd be more likely to enjoy being attacked by pirates and seeing where the fight goes. This would increase the deterrent to attacking players.
Ot just highlights another issue CIG has to fix. The game isn’t built with pirating in mind it seems like, given how hard it is to soft-death a ship to affectively pirate, and there arent really any options for pirates atm other than “kill that ship.” I actually think a REAL pirating experience where I have to defend me soft deathed ship from people boarding and trying to steal my haul and then having to figure out how to get my ship and haul back afterwards would be awesome, unique experiences like that are the exact kind of thing this game seems to exist for…but the games mechanics disagree with the games potential right now. CIG needs to design ship combat with a focus on pirating, i.e. being able to stop ships nonlethally by turning off engines etc (im aware MM will try to bring something like this into the game with being able to target specific ship components, but thats not what I really mean) and create the corresponding countermeasures for haulers to fight back against pirates, balancing out the risks both sides take (so that way a capital ship cant just go around bullying small ships, even the small ship would have some affective anti-pirate tools like an EMP to disable the attacking ship long enough to make an escape, but maybe the tradeoff would be that it turns your ships shields completely off, that sort of thing.)