Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Whilst I do believe that low-sec should be low security I have to admit to agreeing with you on the risk/reward being a little out of whack. I'm more likely to spend time in someone else's nullsec than I am spending any time in low sec. The only thing I do in low sec is pass through and even then I try to mitigate that by using cap ships to jump stuff from the high/low border straight into null.

The only problem with concord response is that unless it's like high sec and pretty much a guarantee of the agressor being toasted it's a little pointless. All it'll do is make the low sec pirates band together until the concord response can be easily mitigated and that would do the complete opposite of what you're proposing, or at least has the potential to.

Increasing the sec status hits won't have much effect either as it'll just stop casual pirates from trying to find pew pew but won't deter the career pirates at all.

Personally I think that your idea of increasing the guns on gates would be an excellent idea but I'd take that one stage further and include stations. Make it dangerous for the pirates to attack someone "in broad daylight", as it were. So heavily penalise any aggression around travel or docking points meaning that the pirates have to actually try to find kills rather than just having to wait for one to come along. That way the mission runners wouldn't be so utterly screwed when travelling about or undocking but make missions just as dangerous to run. The miner mining in a belt is pretty easy pray but for those with a bit of sense you're as safe as you are mission running if you just mine grav sites in low sec.

That way, if you want to mission or mine in low sec you can but you have to keep a permanent eye open or risk getting jumped inside your mission with no chance of npc rescue but you don't have to crap yourself evey time you pass through a gate or undock from a station so much. It is, after all, still supposed to be owned by the empires so it should have at least some law if only in specific locations.

Denied.

Seriously, come to low sec and I'll show you what I think of your idea.


The proper way to open low sec is to lighten up the Sec Status loss so that more people come roaming into Low Sec, when that happens you will have more corps ready to hold territory in low sec and that will open up industrial pilots feeling safer in low sec when their PVPers are providing support in the area.

The reason Null Sec works isn't because it's safer.

The reason Low Sec isn't working is because it's trying to do the "NPC will give you some safety crap" while trying to let players have some chance for killing stuff.

Which is spreading too thin.

Low Sec should have less penalties for PVP, less gate guns for PVP, because whenever I have to deal with pushing our low sec agenda with our high sec PVPers, I inevitably have to deal with a lot of bitching about how they won't be able to enter hi-sec because of sec Status, GCC, and so on.


The philosophy that you need a soft wading pool to get into Null Sec/PVP is NOT what low sec should be. And it has suffered repeatedly and constantly because of it.

Low Sec should be rewarding because it doesn't have Warp Bubbles, it doesn't have sovereignty, it allows you to move a little more comfortable and cause player threats to be SLIGHTLY less inhibitive when it comes to engaging. As well, the value of Low Sec should come from specific types of income better than high sec.

High Sec should be a more consistent but lower reward, Low Sec should be a less consistent but "bulk" rewards which keeps the persistent player coming back, and Null Sec should have the best of both worlds.

No, I don't trust you ;-)

You want more pvpers in low sec, but you're not going to get targets for you to take pot shots at unless pilots feel more confident going there.

The balance is wrong.

There's too many lions and not enough zebras. A few more park wardens would make all the difference.

Low sec can be medium risk. You just have to learn to fly.


And not make stupid mistakes. I'm guilty of that...

I'm curious as to why you think that the risk/reward for lowsec is out of whack. I think it has the highest risk/reward after wormholes (lets face it, wh's are pretty safe most of the time).

Hisec is both low risk and (mostly) low reward.

Nullsec is high risk (although there are many things people can cooperate to do to mitigate those risks) and high reward.

Lowsec is currently relatively middle of the road risk, and high reward.

Lowsec pirates are quite often in shitfit cruisers and below. Not a lot of organized gangs larger than frigs.
There are also a couple things that make lowsec quite low risk (when compared to null)

Lets start with bubbles. Bubbles **** your **** up. If you've never spent a significant amount of time in null, you won't know what i'm talking about. If you die in null, there's a decent chance your pod is going to die as well. In low, more often than not, you can get it out.

Jumping into bubbles: The average ship (battlecruisers, cruisers, frigates, and battleships) are guaranteed tackled. Pods are guaranteed dead. The only ships that really have a good chance are very fast ships (cyna, ceptors, etc.) and covert ops ships.

On that note, covops are nigh-invulnerable in lowsec. If you don't want to be caught, chances are you won't be. In null, jumping into a bubble in a covops is still a small battle to get away.

Drag/stop bubbles. When you warp directly to a gate in null, there's always a chance of flying past the gate and landing in one. Then the dudes come and kill you and you're done. In low, you can always warp directly to a gate with no fear of being tackled (on that side).

Even frigates have to weigh the benefits of tackling your ship, vs getting popped by the gate guns. In larger fights, gate guns easily can sway a fight in favor of whoever agresses last.

Carriers don't have to fear getting drive-by'd in low.

All of these things make lowsec a LOT safer to just move around in than null. And about that reward.

Currently, in faction warfare you can make MORE than enough LP for a tier 1 faction bs in under an hour. Do the math, but keep in mind that the BS are one of the worst ISK/LP conversions you can do.

Its easy to get several hundred mil an hour running in FW.

Not enough reward?

Lowsec plexes are ridiculously easy. They have far less ships to kill. The ships are smaller. The sites are smaller. The escalations are shorter. And they still drop faction/deadspace loot.

Several of my corpies didn't even make their isk in null, they took lowsec vacations to make their isk. Its easy to hit 200m/hr doing lowsec plexes.

Incursions. I'll remind you that the lowsec incursions are currently the only place that the Revenant BPC is capable of dropping. This makes these sites EXTREMELY valuable.

So forgive me if I'm confused as to why you think that the risk/reward is out of whack.
Perhaps you should articulate yourself better.
If you're talking about mining or missions, you're probably right. But why don't you just do those in hisec?

Another proposal suffering from the premise that making space harder to claim and defend will make it more encouraging and popular to live in.

I'm now convinced you're dumb, or don't understand this game at all. In eve, you will be faced with many challenges. Challenges which will require thinking to overcome. Plexing in null has the same problems as in low, with the added problems of bubbles.7

If you think the solution is using a battlecruiser or battleship, you're completely wrong.

Assuming you have no alts for scouts of course, you know who use a covert ops ship for plexing? The smart people. Download EFT, think to yourself "what are the problems i must overcome" and overcome them.

I figured out a ship and fit that worked just fine. It just takes some time, and some brains. So HTFU

I've lived in nullsec. It's safer than lowsec. I've lived there too. Nullsec forces you to be organized to reap a greater reward. Lowsec does not have the rewards or the sovereignty protection.

Lowsec is broken, and people are leaving. They have been for ages. Seriously, join an alliance and go to nullsec.

The risk needs to be lowered to match the lower than nullsec rewards.
Lower the risk and the PvP-lovers who want easy victims cry foul.

Someone is going to be unhappy. Right now it's the victims. When I lived in lowsec, it proved economically nonviable. If the victims can't turn a profit, they leave. Or I should say, they left. This does mean more resources to fewer people, so some can turn a profit, but not enough to sustain "over hunting" of PvE income earners.

Everyone wants better, but no one wants change.

Something has to give. What we need is a nerf/buff to lowsec. Small gangs need a buff. They have been accidentally nerfed repeatedly. It also needs to be safer in lowsec.

They have been talking about removing static rock belts since 05. I think that needs to happen in lowsec. They should mask the signatures of ships. Yes, a lone miner would be hard to find among hundreds of rock belts, but not if there were lots of miners.

So i risk my expensive T3, scanning ship etc. Spend long time scanning for decent sites, which let me remind all the nullsec and highsec people out there aren't exactly numerous. I can scan about 10-20 systems and maybe only find 1-3 combat sites that are actually worth running. Sure they might be easy, but there is still risk of being scanned out and losing the site altogether to a small gang.

And now for the rewards, after spending a couple of hours scanning systems, flying around low sec in a non cloaky flashy red T3 i get a 10m ISK drop from each site i run. WOW risk vs reward, a highsec mission bear could grind that in about 10 minutes running level 4's.

The risk vs reward is definetly out of whack, but completey the wrong way around to what has been said in here. LOTS of risk / little to no reward.

As you said, the problem with low sec is that the risk-reward ratio is WAY off. Unless your corp/alliance/buddies/whatever has the system secured, the additional payout of missions, for instance, is extremely minimal when compared to the risks at hand.

Increasing the mission rewards for low sec missions significantly might be a decent first step, but it might not be a solution because those that could already live in low sec will now make even more money and the rest might still not be able to dig in. At least it would give some kind of incentive though, which currently just isn't there.

Bottom line... something needs to happen... not sure what...