Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And I think the misnomer there is that a pirate is like a faction in the game, like when you create your character, am I creating a law-abiding citizen or am I creating a pirate citizen? There's nothing that would outright prevent any citizen from participating in the service beacon system.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Once we implement the tattoo filtering, maybe. But no, it's not like that. I mean, perhaps some of the details that are in the filtering options will naturally filter out some of those people that you would call a pirate. But certainly it's not going to be like, oh, pirate, no.

Michael Dillon · Gameplay Engineer

It won't ever be explicitly shut off from you, but you may not see certain beacons or whatever because your reputation is so low, because you blow up everyone you fly upon.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I think some of that gets handled by the reputation filter and stuff like that. But again, this is a system where you have to develop how things are supposed to work before you start developing how it can be abused and whatnot. But I think pirates have to have some ability to see. Even if you put a filter that doesn't allow somebody below four stars, I think you still have to be able to see that something's out there. Even though, oh, I've got a one-star rating and they won't let me accept it, I can see from the thing that there's somebody out there. I know there's blood in the water. It's going to be an interesting balance, the challenge.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Well, we don't want the system to be... Right now, we put up nav markers so you can get to the other person. We talked about the fact that people are going to accept a mission, get the nav marker, and then come out, and then drop the mission, and then they're right there. So this is all just part of the gameplay. And what you expose yourself to is like, if I ask for help, I could get this. Is it worth it? And then, so I'm going to offer enough money to attract somebody who's really good at it, or who's in the reputation range that is mostly reliable, or that just goes, you want anybody to answer? Here you go. You're going to get what you pay for. So again, it's just a choice, and it's part of the dynamic universe. We just don't want it to be like a tracking system, though. That's certainly not what it's intended for. But we do want the idea that, yeah, sometimes people set traps, and players are going to do it. And when NPCs can be involved with the universe, that's already like a mission, an ECM mission where you can get ambushed by a pirate somewhere. You get pulled out of quantum travel, or you're just flying around, and guess what? There's pirates. So that's definitely something that's part of the game. And again, it doesn't matter if it's a player or an NPC, it's a fact of the universe.