Crime & Punishment

Apparantly one of the devs at the Vegas meeting made a remark that he'd favor the complete removal of concord.
In other news we just had an expansion which gives players more room and incentives to take matters into their own hands.
It appears we are witnessing a shift from NPC law enforcement to players being given tools and incentives to do that. Not because Concord isn't doing a good job, but Concord is so effective that there is little room left for players to participate in the epic fight between good and bad.

Quite likely CCP will evaluate the effects of its current changes to crimewatch and when they conclude that hisec now has gotten too safe they will nerf Concord to create even more room for 'player interaction'. Afterall they claim not to want hisec to be entirely safe. And it seems like ganking has been reduced considerably since Retribution.

So far CCP has acted cautiously. Eve is a sandbox game. There is no way of knowing how players react when the rules of the game change. So they give us a new set of rules to play with first, look at how we choose to use them and only then consider their next step.

One thing that is missing however is an open discussion about how the security system should work. And I personally feel this is very much needed to prevent a new Incarna. I do not trust the CSM to effectively represent the playerbase when it comes down to hisec matters. So I will present my own views on this matter and hopefully others can contribute with even better ideas.

The key matter in all of this is that actions should always have proper consequences. Someone who breaks the law should always expect to encounter his punishment sooner or later in the form of a loss when someone claims a killright.
There should be no easy way out of a killright (such as changing to a noobship and letting yourself get shot in it). Possibly killrights should remain valid until a criminal has lost ships and pods through this killright that at least match the value of the ship used when creating the killright.
Alternatively the entire killrights system could be replaced by a system where someone becomes a suspect untill such time he has been properly punished.
Until that time there should be tools in place to enable the white knights to disrupt criminal actions. Ideas for this has been suggestions like a concord titan where white knights wait till they can bridge to a crimescene or a crimescene beacon on overview that allows players to warp to the scene to have a look and possibly aid the victim.

On the matter of the 'white knights' I believe that such acctions should be properly rewarded. The new bounty system doesn't appear to be very effective for this. Concord should add additional rewards for law enforcemtent which can be in the form of isk, security status and/or loyalty points. Similarly to the current bounty system these rewards should be properly balanced out against the inflicted loss (to prevent abuse by people shooting their own alts).

Let me agree with you to the point that simply removing concord is not an option with the current system (crimewatch, bounties). We need a system that can replace concord by encouraging players who want to pvp to create a safe environment for the sheep. This seems to work in nullsec where some players (renters) don't pvp either.

Never happen. EVE would lose 2/3 of its subscribers overnight.

I feel that given the current status, if indeed a change is wanted, they should either allow super caps in highsec, or dumb down concord to make them tankable for a little while. Not insta-pop or anything, but like... grinding down a pos effect.

That would make things interesting. Would be nice to see a blob come into high sec and encourage a huuuge fight with concord to create a pvpve environment.

Or wait, that would be silly wouldn't it? Why on earth would devs want concord removed from highsec anyways?

Ok, I like this. Give Concord a good tank and possibly some ewar so they can tie offenders down - creating an opportunity for other players to join the fight and score some kills.
Concord should always end up winning the fight in 1.0 space, but there should be incentives to pick a fight in less secure space (0.4 or 0.5): if you raise the stakes by adding a tank and flying with logistics you might get away with a criminal act - unless ofcourse a few players decide to give concord a helping hand.

I have a freighter pilot with 100k bounty on him. He flies around carrying billions in his cargo. For a freighter pilot a bounty cannot be high enough to make ganking worthwile: it's all about the cargo. For mining barges this might be a different story.
The problem with ganking freighters is that you need an orca or another freighter to pick up the loot drop. That ship will be suspect and any wannabee PvPer can shoot it for an easy kill.
Today there has been no freighter kills posted. Yesterday: 0 as well. The day before: 1 killed by wartargets. Ganking freighters has gotten a bit too hard it seems.

dust 514 needs high sec to stay as it is as far as removing high sec by removing concord players would drop faster then you could blink . its easy to wast money thats not yours (might as well say hay ccp why don't you guys go remove concord
make a lot less money just for me

I read somewhere then there was no concord in eve for some time from some reason, and it was disaster no mission, no mining , no traveling (except pod express ), no trading, 90% of players were unable to play.

EVE would become a better game overnight.

Old player nostalgia aside, this is not 2006, and 2006 sub numbers will not sustain CCP anymore. Let's face the reality that those days are gone.