Forums » Suggestions

Fix Station Camping

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Dec 21, 2015 Dr. Lecter link
For all Corvus stations, require Admired or higher standing to home there. This will have at least two beneficial effects:

1. Fewer noobs will be frustrated by their own poor decisions, because their usual destinations are Corvus stations and their usual result is death. If they are not allowed to home with ease, their frustration will be greatly lessened because they will be zapped somewhere safer each time they die.

2. Corvus standing will become more inherently valuable, and by the time someone has worked Greyspace enough to successfully raise their Corvus standing to Admired, they should know which end of the blaster is which.

Now, to address a misguided possible counter-argument: current game mechanics do nothing (or, little) to discourage the inevitable bad behavior that a portion of players in VO will always exhibit (station camping).

Almost nobody has the patience to properly station camp someone - to actually grief them past the point of legitimate gameplay killing. Killing someone at a Corvus station is not "bad behavior" no matter how disparate their levels are. Nor is waiting for them to come out and telling them "Pay me or you're getting popped again" and then following through..."bad behavior" does not include killing someone even several times over simply because you can, they're there, and they refuse to accede to your demands. They have no obligation to pay, but you have no obligation to let them pass either. And then there's the issue of multiple pilots engaging the same poor idiot...also not "bad behavior."

Actual station camping, then, almost never occurs. Rarely is anyone sitting there repeatedly killing some dumb noob simply because they want to make them miserable. Perceived station camping, however, is likely common...anyone trapped by a combination of legitimate gameplay and their own poor choices in homing is likely to feel station camped.

The solution is making it MUCH harder to home at Corvus stations.
Dec 21, 2015 incarnate link
For all Corvus stations, require Admired or higher standing to home there.

I don't have any problem with that. Although it will require some special-casing, as we have to be able to home people there who cannot be homed anywhere else (due to KoS status, getting bounced from their currently-homed station). But, we can basically override the limitation in those cases and force them to be homed there, if there's no other option.
Dec 21, 2015 Savet link
Another option is to require respect or even neutral at any faction to home.

This would require a basic amount of work to gain access and makes sense from a RP perspective. Since Corvus starts at dislike, they would still have to work to get to neutral, but other neutral-start stations remain unaffected unless they drop their standing.

Otherwise, +1 to everything above.
Dec 21, 2015 Dr. Lecter link
Yeah, I was assuming that a form of the same thing that happens now would be applied: if you're homed in nation space and become KOS there, you'll be bounced to Corvus as a "home" by default even though you aren't "homed" there. But actually selecting a Corvus station as a home would require faction standing. If someone has become KOS at their home station and then winds up being station camped at Corvus because of that rule, they're no worse off than they currently would be and much more common issues are better off.

Maybe Respected would be sufficient; as Savet notes they do start at Dislike.
Dec 21, 2015 Death Fluffy link
Respect is best and I would make the requirement universal rather than Corvus specific. If for nothing else than to add more to the perceived value for the effort invested in building the standing.
Dec 21, 2015 greenwall link
I still like the idea of providing a warning about setting corvus as home for people under combat level X.
Dec 21, 2015 Dr. Lecter link
If they've managed to raise Corvus standing to Respect, does it really matter what their combat level is? One doesn't slip, trip, and accidentally do enough work in greyspace to get Corvus Respect...one could, however, get to combat level X without setting foot outside nation space and learning how things work.
Dec 21, 2015 biretak link
+1 for acquiring local standing of respect or better to home at a station
Dec 21, 2015 greenwall link
A warning would directly address the problem while still allowing those with less than respect standing to home there if they really wanted to (which happens quite a lot). It would also require less fiddling around with special-casing.

What the trigger would be for removing the warning doesn't necessarily have to be tied to combat. But I think a warning about homing is better than fully prohibiting homing.
Dec 21, 2015 biretak link
greenwall, what newb reads or listens to warnings? even warnings from their own guild mates?
Dec 21, 2015 Dr. Lecter link
What biretak said; if noobs were smart enough to heed a warning, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
Dec 21, 2015 greenwall link
Making "respect" required for setting home doesn't make anyone less of an idiot or directly indicate to them that there is a greater danger of setting your home at Corvus than elsewhere. It just gives those idiots a better selection of ships, and they still can be camped without realizing how someone can keep shooting them without consequence.
Dec 21, 2015 incarnate link
It still gives them time to learn, and most likely not be locked into a station where they keep detonating over and over until they ragequit in confusion and frustration.

Nothing is ever perfect, but this is a reasonable mitigation of a specific case, and that's a useful thing. It's better to follow the 80/20 rule than to aim for an ideal.

That isn't to say we won't have warnings elsewhere, at the entrance to grayspace, in addition to this. One mitigating change does not preclude other mitigating changes as well.
Dec 21, 2015 Death Fluffy link
I don't have a problem with an additional warning, perhaps the first time someone homes with Corvus about the risks associated with doing so. Or having the warning persist until it is either selected to not repeat again or the player has reached some benchmark. In fact, I think it might be a good idea to have that warning in place along with the homing requirement.

biretak is correct though. I have seen several guildmates become stuck at one of the Corvus stations and request rescue, even after having been warned by the general VO population and the guild. It still wouldn't hurt to have at least one final warning so they have no one to blame but themselves.
Dec 22, 2015 Lunchfoot link
+1 nice work guys this sounds like a great idea in the making
Dec 22, 2015 abortretryfail link
+1 to a warning
-1 to requiring standing to home at Corvus. I'll elaborate later if anyone cares, but I don't have a ton of time right now.
Dec 22, 2015 Savet link
Please elaborate when you have time arf. Newbies don't read. They don't read warnings. If they read them they think "that doesn't apply to me, I'm elite!"

We need some mechanism to keep level 0/1 newbs from homing there.
Dec 22, 2015 DeathSpores link
Message "insufficient level to home here" ?
Corvus stations require at least a level 2 to home?
Dec 22, 2015 Savet link
I think a simple "you need to be respected to make this your home." Is a lot cleaner from an RP perspective and doesn't require any special logic unique to Corvus.

As Inc suggested, they could still drop super-KOS people there when they have nowhere else to go.
Dec 22, 2015 Pizzasgood link
+1