Griefing and social engineering policies

[TheMarksman]

Camping on the safezone border is probably going to be allowed. Space is big, we don't think it'll be 2000 players waiting for innocent prey at the borders... If it becomes a problem (for newbies or otherwise), we can have some technical measures to prevent this. We will define these cases further at a later date.

We've done the math before and in theory, it would require some two thousand players to render the entire border. But in practice, it's likely to miss a ship anywhere within your 5km render radius.
Not to mention that it's unlikely for one to organise that many people and more just to "blockade" the safe zone.

 

[Captain Riker]

We've done the math before and in theory, it would require some two thousand players to render the entire border. But in practice, it's likely to miss a ship anywhere within your 5km render radius.
Not to mention that it's unlikely for one to organise that many people and more just to "blockade" the safe zone.

I seriously think people are going about the whole "blockade the safezone" thing the wrong way. There are most definitely more efficient ways of doing it than just surrounding the safezone itself. Of course safezone camping is a form of "griefing" so I guess those players will get punished...

 

[Axel]

@JoelFB I think it can be improved: for objects in safe zones, you can consider a similar of "anchor", i.e. if the player enable the "anchor" on himself or the object, it could not be pushed out of the safe zone (pushing back at a certain distance from the border). Before switching on, check whether the entire object is in the safe area.

For the first time, it’s not so badly.

 

[Messir Astaroth]

To be honest, I'm not a fan of these features.

For one, you are in no way going to be able to manage the overflow of reports and stuff coming in. Best you can do is try to prevent cheating, and I sometimes have doubts about that. You mention having ingame moderators? I will assume these come from the playerbase like the discord mods. Bringing in the community as mods is not a good decision, and is ripe for abuse. Especially considering these mods already have their own biases and will undoubtedly use their powers unfairly. I will not say names, but we have direct quotes from SB moderators saying they will make sure specific players get banned from the game. Also what powers do these mods have? Kicking from the game? Chat muting? Temp banning? I've been dealing with bad moderation for years. Once a rumor starts spreading by one of your enemies that you hack or cheat it's always guilty until proven innocent. Even considering there is zero evidence of something like that.

Second, this game is advertised as player driven. What is being shown is not player driven. It's just limiting how the game can be played.

The rules also make no sense. It all works around keeping new players safe. Which tbh is a flawed method of doing things. Like it implies that killing noobs even outside the safezone is a bad thing. Just in general it's not a bad thing. Even the idea of luring players out of the safezone is not a bad thing. It's all in the concept of risk vs reward. They risk trusting you and they may or may not get a reward. Tons and tons of successful games work with this method. In most cases, it doesn't scare off any players. All it does is teach them to be better at the game. If the risk is to great for the rewards as a new player, as developers you should increase the reward to make it easier to get new players out there flying again. Do that instead of creating hard to enforce rules that are over complicated.

Also, how do you define new player, and how is the regular player supposed to be able to tell who is new or not.

All you have to do is make sure it's obvious you have a greater chance of being killed outside the safezone. And people should automatically know this include things such as scamming. The playerbase isn't 9 years old. The majority are all over the age of 16, and they can read, think, and weigh risk vs reward on their own. You do not need to coddle them. They are not children. If they don't want to die, then don't leave the safezone.

I cant agree more. Especially about the ban of any valuable social engineering and espionage. Im an EVE player, and I cant imagine the situation, where CCP Games would ban a player just because he lured someone from hisec to lowsec and killed him there. Also I dont understand how a 'player driven sandbox game' can be without social engineering, that is utilized by pirates and other evil players who like to play on the 'dark side'. Lets put it simple: conventional pvp and conventional war is BORING AF! Thats why we run from it to sandbox games, where there are no social limits. EVE Online is a good example of it. Nobody can cal it toxic. It is cold and harsh, yes. But not toxic. And all the social engineering that you can imagine is right there, allowed and legitimate. The Rookie Griefing is a big no-no, but noone is really touching the newborns, unless they go to lowsec any other dangerous parts of space.

Also why cant I just rob someone outside the safezone, pretending that I am their 'friend'? WTF!!?!?! Guys, cmon. Do I need to announce a full-scale warfare every time I want to steal, lets say, a new and 'top secret' Collective's PvP ship from their station? Of course no. I will just plant a spy into their ranks, and then use him as an infiltrator of an 'unknown faction', who will steal the ship then either disappear or make it back like nothing happened.

I can understand all these rules during CA, but most of these restrictions must be lifted when the game goes to EA. Because all of this rules above - is clearly NOT a sandbox. And not a player-driven by any means. I hope you will understand what I mean as soon as the game starts. Or earlier.

The best way - is to make the Origin safe zone safe, and the rest of the space must have no limits at all in all scenarios. Especially in social engineering. Ban cheaters/hackers and those who repeatedly abuse confirmed exploits. Leave the rest of the game to players, leave the sand where it belong.

We, endokids, know what to do with the sand. We dont need your 'no-no' nere and 'no-no' there. Sand is sand, and we want to play with it the way we want.

 

[Axel]

Instead of bans, consider insurance options like Eve or Star Citizen.
At the beginning restriction seem like a simple solution, but its can also lead to negative attitude.

It is worth delimiting situations when the player allows and when he is extremely unwilling.

 

[Axel]

For example, attempts to steal control of a ship in a safe port can be a full-fledged part of the gameplay, the "victim" captain could prepare a trap in advance and have fun with it.

This provides a lot of gameplay ideas.

 

[JoelFB]

Generally we want to allow "creativity" in the universe, like the above example by Axel. However in Starbase that would probably only happen at a more distant (player) station that doesn't have safezone enabled. We'll tweak rules as we go along, but we remain adamant that new players will be protected around the starting stations/first hours of gameplay if they are not seeking danger.

Our vision for Starbase supports both kinds of players - those who want to remain peaceful/unharmed can do so, and those who want to live the full pirate life and blow stuff up can do exactly that. The crux of Starbase will lie in the middle where players who are not heavily leaning towards either choice meet. That middleground is where we expect most players will have the most fun - having some kind of a guaranteed protection of most of the possessions (like inventory/stations/ships) but being at the risk of losing e.g. the current ship when mining with friends at a high-risk, high-reward asteroid field far outside of the safe zone, where pirates are known to attack.

During development, especially before the Early Access launch but also possibly during the EA period, the balance will inevitably shift towards one or the other from time to time. Every so often we'll release a feature that either exposes "safe" players to attackers (such as happened with the initial player station patch), or makes players too safe for any attackers to harm them. This is part of game development and we'll either try to announce the changes beforehand, or try to react afterwards and listen to feedback.

To reiterate our overall plan:
1) Eventually the ingame rules will govern the game universe, and if something is possible to do, it's allowed (social engineering is the exception, we will look at those on a case-by-case basis)
2) In Closed Alpha we have additional rules or guidelines because we don't have all the ingame rules/features in place yet

Generally speaking Closed Alpha is not the place for major PvP fighting, the game is simply not ready for it and the userbase is too low. This will gradually change as we get closer to the Early Access release.

That said, a clarification for both Closed Alpha and Early Access:

Absolutely no messing about in safe zones. Blocking other users from e.g. building a station or disturbing them in other ways is forbidden, and so are other similarly "clever" tactics. Do not grief or disrupt station builders if there is a safe zone. If somebody/a group is building a new player station and it doesn't yet have its Foundation in place, and thus has no safe zone, then that is allowed and is part of the risk of building player stations.

We will be refunding all victims in a safe zone, and most likely also if they were building a station and were attacked before a station was formed. This helps the overall progress of the game during Closed Alpha. So please get in touch with our CMs if this happens. However we will not punish the attackers as this is technically as intended.

This week's patch should bring in player station safe zones as an ingame rule (see Patch Warning). After that the rule for attacks is simple: Inside safe zones, players are safe. Outside of safe zones, attacks can happen.

 

[Zaff]

If somebody/a group is building a new player station and it doesn't yet have its Foundation in place, and thus has no safe zone, then that is allowed and is part of the risk of building player stations.

1) Does that mean, after safezone patch, that an unfinished foundation can be destroyed?

2) Is there any ETA on mechanics disabling safezones / capture on a foundation-finished station? Will it be possible to destroy/capture one before EA wipe?

3) What's the radius of the playermade safezone? Is it constant?

4) Could one in theory build a station extending outside of its own safezone?

5) Can safezones from two stations overlap?

 

[Messir Astaroth]

I have been told by CM that we can attack the unfinished foundation before it is finished and the safezone becomes active. She also told me that we can raid them the way we want (lmaololrofl) if they do not managed to protect themselves with the safezone.

Also I would like to know one thing:

6) If someone attacks people near or just related to a player-made station, that already has a safezone active, will it be considered 'messing with safezones and attacking builders'? Because yea, well, we will attack builders in this scenario, but we wont be able to attack them INSIDE their safezone, we will be able to do that only when they go out mining, for example. Will that be punished after the patch? I hope not. But we kinda need an official answer. None of us wants to lose his CA access, because he just misread or misunderstood the rules.

 

[GooseMan-HonkDealer]

Out of the box with this but only because I want to stress that some items or tactics can still be flagged as social engineering in their definition.

What do you do about a ship thats built to look like another and used for combatant intentions?
(Not stealing a blueprint or making a carbon copy,) but lets say an Empire force flies a ship made(from scratch) to resemble a Kingdom Knight .
We can't bar people from making knock-offs in appearances, some ship shapes follow a common anatomy to start.


And what about Ambush trapping, as though word of coordinates to a valuable wreck gets picked up by a salvage team only to find another hostile ship waiting or nearby.

Coordinates are a commodity in the game and just about anyone that has them could be able to use them as they will.

Yes, the question would be grey if the coordinates were fabricated, but at the same time deciding to seek out coordinates is a player choice as well as a freedom.

 

[astrolite]

I understand the need to protect new players, I think this will have to be done through mechanics and education. Not moderation and rules that noone will follow. As soon as the game reaches a threshold of popularity you will not be able to uphold most of these rules within a reasonable time.

Sure you can argue that alpha should be this way, but at early access launch there will always be social engineering in some way. Its human nature.

I dont know the answer but i think it starts with mechanics and education for the new player. An example would be a tutorial giving the player a ship to fly, have clear safe zone boundries and mechanics, show the player how it works, tell them about these instances of possibly losing everything, have them literally lose their ship through a method of social engineering(Come up with a story.. Ahh the Empire has tricked us), then refund the ship through some form of insurance for new players. New players should have some form of forgiveness or insurance for awhile anyways.

 

[Messir Astaroth]

I hope in EA the permanent safe zones will be much smaller in size that we have now. Really, there is no need to make it that huge. The road to Empire/Kingdom outposts should be dangerous. The road to the asteroid belt should be dangerous. And the belt itself should be dangerous. If you want to get best ores, you must accept the danger. And the more you traverse into the belt, the more and more better ores should appear around you. The space around Origin should be dangerous. If you want to be safe, make sure your own dynamic safe zone is up.

And the road from Origin to the moon orbit and from the moon orbit to the Moon City should be dangerous as well. Otherwise there will not be enough sand in our sandbox.

 

[XenoCow]

I hope in EA the permanent safe zones will be much smaller in size that we have now. Really, there is no need to make it that huge. The road to Empire/Kingdom outposts should be dangerous. The road to the asteroid belt should be dangerous. And the belt itself should be dangerous. If you want to get best ores, you must accept the danger. And the more you traverse into the belt, the more and more better ores should appear around you. The space around Origin should be dangerous. If you want to be safe, make sure your own dynamic safe zone is up.

And the road from Origin to the moon orbit and from the moon orbit to the Moon City should be dangerous as well. Otherwise there will not be enough sand in our sandbox.

I think that compared to the entire ring around Eos, the safe zones are very small. The intention is that any players who want to experience danger will probably be playing mostly outside the permanent safe zones and storing their things at faction stations far from origin. The initial safe zone for those players is just a place to store a little bit of wealth so that if you lose everything outside, that you don't hit rock-bottom.

 

[Messir Astaroth]

I think that compared to the entire ring around Eos, the safe zones are very small. The intention is that any players who want to experience danger will probably be playing mostly outside the permanent safe zones and storing their things at faction stations far from origin. The initial safe zone for those players is just a place to store a little bit of wealth so that if you lose everything outside, that you don't hit rock-bottom.

No they are too big, imo. They cover the entire living area at the moment, and it is bad. Even the safe living space that we had at the very beginning - was much bigger than we would need in the next 5 years. And now the covered area (excluding the moon) is colossal, we do not need it that big, as it will not become crowded untill the end of the next decade. Also safe zone on moon's orbit is clearly not needed at all.

Such a vast safe space kills PvP and there is simply no reason to go outside at the moment. And it is very, VERY bad for the game, for the community and for the entire sandbox ecosystem.

Just my thoughts. I would love to see the space more thrilling and dangerous. More cold, harsh and cruel. And unforgiving.

 

[Super Pig]

I honestly don't really like this that much. I definitely think trolling in the safezones and stuff shouldn't be aloud but, I think there shouldn't even be many rules outside of the safezone. I think, as long as you aren't exploiting or hacking and stuff, you should be able to do basically anything outside of the safezone. I do think it maybe shouldn't be aloud to camp safezones though, as once the game gets bigger, camping the safezone would make it super hard to get out of the safezone and actually go mine or something.

 

[Bob Dole]

As a player who has never left the safe zone, I can say that protecting new players from social engineering is going to be a major drain on resources. Why not just make a tether where you can't leave the safe zone without clicking a button, and before being allowed to click it you are given a 10-second timer with a popup that reads:

"You could be being cheated to leave the safe zone, once you click this button your ship will become destroyable by players and asteroids, so don't leave if you can't afford to lose your ship, if you still decide to leave you will be on your own BE WARNED PLAYING THE GAME WITHOUT A SHIP IS VERY DIFFICULT"

If this isn't enough and they still go out... then It's like... you can't exactly protect a redneck with a firecracker from blowing his fingers off, people blindly gullible to the degree you've described in the op is perhaps the type of person that shouldn't be playing mmos... or allowed near pointy objects/cars irl.

 

[XenoCow]

As a player who has never left the safe zone, I can say that protecting new players from social engineering is going to be a major drain on resources. Why not just make a tether where you can't leave the safe zone without clicking a button, and before being allowed to click it you are given a 10-second timer with a popup that reads:

"You could be being cheated to leave the safe zone, once you click this button your ship will become destroyable by players and asteroids, so don't leave if you can't afford to lose your ship, if you still decide to leave you will be on your own BE WARNED PLAYING THE GAME WITHOUT A SHIP IS VERY DIFFICULT"

If this isn't enough and they still go out... then It's like... you can't exactly protect a redneck with a firecracker from blowing his fingers off, people blindly gullible to the degree you've described in the op is perhaps the type of person that shouldn't be playing mmos... or allowed near pointy objects/cars irl.

I think that that does sound like a good idea to stop some social engineering schemes, but it still is in the interest of a fledgling mmo to try to protect it's new players long enough to get them hooked.

I think FB have good reason to be worried about new players as much as they are. What does it take away from players that want to live more dangerously? Is having to be nice to new players that much of a burden on players that want to play with more risk?

 

[Bob Dole]

You may be right Xenocow, and now that I think about it, even world of warcraft was very strict in its early days, and in those days actively tried to stop all toxic behavior, but now that they are big they don't do any active policing, so perhaps this is the winning strategy for the first while.

 

[ivangrozniy]

It all works around keeping new players safe, yes! We can agree to disagree - we want to protect new players from griefers. Tons and tons of games also have very toxic and unfriendly communities and general bad experience for new players. We will try to be better.

Here's an example of how this could work out:
1) A new player joins the game is having fun, maybe just bought their first spaceship
2) Somebody talks to them in the chat and lures them out of the safezone ("just ignore the safezone warnings, the ore deposit is right here")
3) The player is attacked by pirates and destroyed
4) The player reports this as griefing
5) The report comes to moderators and then developers
6) We look at the chat log and determine that social engineering was used to harm a player in the safezone
7) We issue a warning or a timed ban to the offender (and refund the player's ship most likely)

It is a pretty complicated way, for sure, however we want to promise our players that safezones are safe. We will punish players who go against this. No matter how many warnings we post about safezones and what it means, people will ignore them. That is why we need to have this kind of social engineering rules in place, and we will act on these issues.

Basically, for PvP players - get out of Origin and other starting stations, or at least don't use them to prey on new players (new players meaning any player in these starting stations, just don't do anything shady in general when visiting these stations). I imagine that once players can build stations, a major "free for all" station will be built somewhere with no safezone (other than protecting buildings etc). We/I probably communicated this in a way that wasn't super clear. There will be distinctions between safezones. More info will follow later.

To elaborate further, we don't see this as an either-or situation. We think we can have both - players who just want to play safe, and players who like PvP, and they can both co-exist, and make the universe richer for it.

This is all still completely unclear in terms of how one might determine if a player is new or not. But, I have some points that you may or may not have already considered:

1. I don't believe you can actually sustain any of these rules with any degree of consistency, which means you are opening yourself and the cm team up for online ridicule that might harm the community and the game reputation instead of helping it.
2. Have you done the metrics and logistics on the sustainability of such rules? How many players do you expect to play this mmo? What cm size will you need for the expected population of players? If ( and this is a large, but hopefully, realistic if) you get over 50,000 - 80,000 playing the game on a constant basis, you are going to have so much drama on your hands that you won't know how to deal with it. You will overwork your cm team and they will have to make quick decisions that will likely be unfair to players or seen as one-sided, simply because they won't have the time to "judge" the situation. Community drama grows at an erratic rate, sometimes exponentially, and is not proportional to its size.
3. If your population grows and you start adding players as mods, you are inevitably introducing favoritism in the system no matter what you do. I'm sure you can imagine how this may backfire on the game and community as a whole.
4. You will become hostage to the rules you implement. You will have to keep them and be impartial. The moment someone smells a whiff of favoritism or bias, you, the cm team, and whoever else will be enforcing the rules are going to be marked online. This is simply what happens. This will especially happen in Starbase because there will be huge time sinks into building projects, designs, logistics... the game is very involved and can get complex. Salt will generate quickly, especially due to the inevitable fickleness of human judgement.
5. You make it seem like the toxic players are pvpers, when in fact they can be on all ends of the spectrum. Many a sweat carebear turned toxic, many a gankfest pvper became toxic in some game in some way. In general it's not a good idea to cater to one specific group if you want to create an mmo where lots of gameplay spectrums are possible. I am sure the SB discord and forums will have a books upon books of discussions once EA hits about toxic pvpers and "carebears" and the typical conversations around these topics. May I suggest some ideas?

There is another, maybe a bit of a harsher but also fairer way of implementing rules in the game that will protect both you and the cms as well as set the standards for players in a way that is easier to understand.

1. Too many rules ruins everything. Too many unclear rules requires judges and lawyers (figuratively speaking) and interpretation. Do you really want that in an mmo? If you do have rules of conduct, you really need to think about a very clear set of rules based around the game mechanics so that misinterpretation is evident.
2. If you want to protect nonpvpers and new players, establish the rules with game mechanics, not with a list of words. It makes you and the cm team less responsible for keeping the peace and gives a much clearer idea to the community as to what is allowed and what isn't. It also sets the expectation for anyone looking for a game such as Starbase. There is less room for interpretation. Granted this will take time, but that's what an EA is for right?
3. Avoid refereeing as much as possible. What orgs do to other orgs should be org business, unless there is some clear indication of breaking clear rules (such as exploiting). You should focus on creating better game mechanics that would allow nonpvpers to thrive in their space and incentivize them to take pvp risks, as well as incentivizing pvp orgs to have non-pvp-based activity as well. With game mechanics, not words.A sort of middle ground can be achieved with plenty of room on the fringes. The middle spectrum should be the focus, a blend that does pvp but also does other things that are none-pvp.
4. It is a bit ironic that it is robotic endos that are in the game, the game ui and overall feel is a bit harsh and metalic and, well, harsh. And yet there are all these rules and stipulations and addendums being piled on top of each other in order to govern endo behavior... by humans
5. While this is just a bunch of words and pipe dreams, you know your game best and I wish you the best of luck in getting into EA and a successful launch and a good, thriving, and large community of gamers making metal and killing each other for fun

 

[Walord]

i feel like a lot of parrallels can be made with eve online for the community aspect, so a lot of my opinions are based of eve.
i like the idea that everything outside developpers save zone (ill call em dev-sz) is fair game, obv no cheating, so that means spy ops and social engineering to get information or ressources would be legal (creating new accounts for impersonation is something even im not sure about, it would add more layers to the wars in my opinions and just makes it more interresting, aka, outside dev-sz is the wild west, some actions may be low blows, but would be legal. In the end, people will make their own moderation if someone has a bad rep
inside dev-sz, to be honest im more on the "you can lure people out" side of things, but it all depends on how fb implements things to stop this, because there can be so many grey area, but lets be honest, you would have to be very gullible to get lured out of the dev-sz by someone whos very insisting. Imo, that one would be on you.
Also i dont think this would be a reccuring problem since you dont get much out it, at least ingame
I do think restricting repeted offender (we could call them criminals) out of dev-sz would be a more appropriate reprimand