It is an unfortunate fact of life that there are people out there who derive pleasure from the act of killing other people. Indeed, in an organic MMO universe, you expect this sort of emergent gameplay. Pirating, murdering and bounty hunting are all valid in-game play styles.

However, it is our belief that it is exactly this sort of gameplay which has been taken to some extremes by certain individuals and the in-game mechanics put new players at a distinct disadvantage.

The tutorials do not cover these aspects of gameplay, NPC security forces rarely react as you would expect and these new players end up getting very frustrated. We have seen this first hand in the FD forums and our own Ghost Squadron forums.

When all new players are spawning in LHS 3447 or Eravate, pirates turn up and it is like shooting fish in a barrel. They simply don't stand a chance.

Many are turning to the sanity of private groups like Mobius or Veyder or worse; isolating themselves in Solo. However, with Mobius reaching the Private group limit of 20,000 recently, things are reaching critical mass.  Many new players aren't even aware of these private groups but when they enter into the trust of a PvE group, they tend to prefer it over Open to escape the griefers.However, they have also recently been struck with a plague of the same griefers who would make the lives of new players difficult.

There is clearly an imbalance of play-styles and the ability to involve authorities more, distinguish Player Killers more easily and punish them heavier, instancing issues when attempting to find pirates to kill or newbies to help, so on and so forth.

We, the peace loving and noble Commanders of the Elite universe, call upon our Frontier Development overlords to add more spawning points for new players. New players need more protection and their introduction to the overwhelming possibilities of a 1:1 scale galaxy needs to be nurtured if Elite is to maintain a fresh influx or players who don't simply ragequit.

Our Suggestions:

• Allow new players an option of several spawn points which offer several systems to jump to within 7.56Ly (jump range of a stock Sidewinder). Some of these systems may or may not be suitable, depending on their population, major faction alignment and security status.
  
  Some suggested systems (and their system count within jump-range):
  - 78 Ursae Majoris (8 systems)
  - Alioth (9 systems)
  - Alpha Centauri (4 systems, though 1 is Sol)
  - Aulin (4 systems)
  - BD+47 2112 (4 systems)
  - Beta Hydri (4 systems)
  - Chi Herculis (5 systems)
  - Eranin (6 systems)
  - G 239-25 (4 systems)
  - Guy (5 systems)
  - Harma (4 systems)
  - HDS 1879 (8 systems)
  - I Bootis (4 systems)
  - Islasto (4 systems)
  - Lalande 6320 (9 systems)
  - Lave (10 systems)
  - LHS 3006 (4 systems)
  - LHS 417 (4 systems)
  - Magec (6 systems)
  - Naraka (4 systems)
  - Ovid (6 systems)
  - Styx (4 systems)
  - Tangaroa (4 systems)
  - Tilian (5 systems)
  - Xelabara (4 systems)
  
  8 of these systems have 6 or more within stock Sidewinder range. This list was generated with CMDR VicTic's Sphere tool: http://edtools.ddns.net/sphere.php
  
  

• Impose harsher penalties on PvP players; especially those that target new players. Place larger bounties on their heads, make them more visible on the scanner and allow for in-game player faction alliances to be visible. Therefore if a CMDR shows up as, say "Smiling Cat Crew" then that may warn the player to beware.
  
  

• Place a 12-24 hour "no fire" timer for new players which prevents them from being attacked by other players.
  
  

• Adjust the tutorials to give new players a better idea on how to cope in PvP combat and how to communicate with other players.
  
  
• Or just enact the PvP policy that Ashley Barley stated in your own forums in 2012 during the Kickstarter period:
  https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2721
  
  [QUOTE]
  

  How do we plan to address PvP (player vs player) “griefing”?
  An obvious danger is an advanced player with a big well-armed ship in a busy system spends their time just picking off beginners, for fun.

  To understand how this will be stopped requires a little bit of understanding how real player ships will be treated slightly differently to non-player ships. Players will automatically be part of a “Pilot’s Federation” and will be identified as such, together with their ranking and name. Bounties are paid by this Federation – something that is therefore much higher for those that kill other Federation members. It will be balanced so that this cannot be used as an exploit (so a beginner killing a beginner is taken less seriously than an Elite pilot killing a beginner – it will be based on the ranking difference).

  There are four separate ways we will address this:

  1. The offender will very quickly get a serious price on their head (bounty) and criminal record. That price on their head will attract bounty hunters.

  2. Local police or military will respond very quickly and strongly to them.

  3. It will be legitimate for other players to attack them for the attractive bounty without attracting a bounty for themselves, as once there is a bounty on their head they are officially a pirate and ‘free game’ for everyone.

  4. If enough players complain about the offender's behaviour in a certain time, then they will be banned from this group
  
  [END QUOTE]

Sincerely,
CMDR JuxtaThePozer
Ghost Squadron
Pilot - Predator Flight (Delta) - Grim Reaper 7th Division

"In absentia luci, tenebrae vincunt" (In the absence of light, darkness conquers)

CMDR Veyder
Ghost Squadron
Wing Commander

CMDR Dobermann IX
Ghost Squadron
Deputy Wing Commander

CMDR Coragon
Ghost Squadron
Squadron Leader - Grim Reaper 4th Division

CMDR S!LK
Adle's Armada
Wing Commander