EVE General Discussion

What in the hell?

CCP, from the start, has always said that everything done on EVE is PvP... EVERYTHING. Sure, it might not all be about guns blazing and ships exploding (btw, exploding is magic,) but everything is PvP related. That one isk game people play on the market? PVP. Running the belts in nullsec and snagging those faction / officer spawns right after downtime, that's PvP. Scanning down and running plexes before anyone else can? Also PvP. Sure, you might not be making someone else explode, but you've been getting to things that would provide other players with more wealth, therefore preventing them from obtaining more wealth and increasing your wallet balance. It's economic warfare, but some people seem to think it was put in place so you can play EVE without conflict and that's not the case.

Suggestions like "remove the PvP option from highsec" would actually destroy EVE's economy on a level where they might as well pull the plug on the server now. I'm not just talking about minerals that are mined through bots, but loot gained from mission running which is then either melted down to minerals, sold on the market for cheap for newbies to buy and use or used for invention purposes. I'm okay with cheap goods for newbs, but adding more minerals just crashes the already low prices and hurts the miners more than being suicided. As far as invention goes, more people doing it with cheaper meta mods to increase chances just hurts the already terrible profit margin for T2 production. f CCP ever listened to the people that demanded highsec be a "safe" zone, EVE would die. The amount of people unsubbing would be far greater than what happened this past summer with the whole Incarna / Nex debacle.

You say CCP would draw more people in IF highsec was safe? They might, but what would those new players do? Missions? Mine? Market warfare? Sure, there are some people that actually enjoy missions, but after seeing the same ones over and over again, they get boring. They could add more of them (which they do on occasion,) but there still isn't that many to do. They could adding raiding content (follow me on this one,) but CCP has insisted that they don't want to create instances on TQ because they're no better than shards. So they add raiding content and all the people from WoW are happy right up until they realize that some large alliance (not Goons since the majority of our 6000 accounts left when highsec went 100% safe and TEST probably followed us) now has that content on farm status. No instance means it's first come, first serve and someone's going to get their first after downtime and stay there the whole day, everyday. No, they won't instance that new content (do you really want them trying to add bits the server, it's got enough issues as it is.)

TL;DR version for those that fear the paragraph ;-)
CCP has stated numerous times that all of EVE is PvP in one way or another. Making highsec 100% and removing PvP results in thousands of people leaving the game, most likely an economic crash that's on par wih post "Great War" Germany and a lack of PvE content to keep new players... EVE dies (I know, EVE is dying.)

There needs to be a threat to high sec miners, belt rats are not one. So leave suiciding the way it is or up belt rats to the point where you need a fitted tank to survive. Up mining ship tanks across the board to compensate for these stronger belt rats so miners aren't gimped but restrict drones on mining ships to mining drones only. These spawns will also escalate in damage eventually to the point where no mining ships should be able to survive without external support. Two options, get support from others or warp to a different belt and wait for despawn.

Mining needs to be more dangerous, the occasional gank outside of the goon blue ice fun is not dangerous, a minor nuisance perhaps. Belt rats need buff (in damage, not in ISK, no one farms belt rats in high-sec anyway and there is no reason to add incentive). Starter systems can be the exception to the rule for these belt rats with weak belt rats spawning there but there should be a large reduction in the asteroids in these systems.

In Station.

Therefore I deem your entire post invalid.

This man (the OP) is a moron. While I agree that nowhere in Eve is safe, nor should it be so, the OPs manifesto sounds more like an angry chihuahua trying to sound tough after lapping up some tequila. As if all the miners and mission runners are going to emit a collective "Ooooh, now I get it, why didn't you tell us this in the first place?"

In other words, you wrote a big ol' angry post directed at those who write big ol' angry posts about losing a pretend ship in a game. Wow, that's revolutionary, on the cutting edge of forum posting and never been done before. As soon as you get done polishing the dongs of the yarrs, my Drake can use some detailing...got rat guts on the view screen.

Please, go far far away. I'm getting facepalm elbow here.

It doesn't matter whether or not its part of the game. Lots of things USED TO BE part of the game. Hell, super carriers with drones are part of the game but they soon won't be. The only real discussion to have is whether or not it SHOULD BE part of the game. So, rather than telling everyone thats how it is and suck it, tell us why it should be part of the game. My guess is that you're argument will essentially be 1. its part of the game 2. nothing should be safe 3. Variations on risk vs reward. The argument will likely be refuted with 1. my post above 2. griefing should have limits 3. nullsec carebear bots mean sov holders get huge rewards for no risk while they simultaneously berate hisec carebears (and bots).

But the real discussion doesn't happen on these boards or on any eve related board. Its the internal discussion that potential subscribers have with themselves. CCP has to find a happy middle ground that allows people with some reservations about non-consensual pvp to say to themselves, "its dangerous, but that will be fun" but NOT say to themselves "the constant griefing isn't worth it."

There is an incredibly easy solution to the problem: remove all of the isk making grinds and industrial/trading portions of the game. Put out an endless supply of free ships. Everyone will PvP because there wouldn't be anything to lose.

Maybe the people over at World of Tanks and CCP can get together and give your risk free PvP

There is no way in hell I am going to read the OP's epic wall of text.

But that quote stood out.

Please enlighten me how unsafe it is when docked in a station?

I have to admit, you got me

We're already AT the happy middle ground, and the problem with ganking/griefing is grossly overstated. How often would you say the average person gets ganked in highsec? Not how many ganks/other forms of grief HAPPEN in highsec, but how often it happens per person. I'd wager it's a few times a year, tops, unless they're doing something really stupid. And the people who DO get griefed/ganked fairly often come whining to the forums, where they are bombarded with help/advice (albeit somewhat condescending advice, though that doesn't make it wrong) on ways to reduce the risk to practically zero. And yes, provided you don't go around giving people a REASON to gank you, the odds of getting ganked are very, very slim.

The isk grinds are one of the big things that make eve FUN. It's not so much the grinding itself, but rather the fact that every loss represents, you know, LOSS. If you don't get jittery the first time you go out pvping (hell I still get them when I pvp for the first time in a few weeks) then there's something wrong with you. Without the grind, there is no risk, and without the risk, pvp becomes really boring really fast.

When I first started playing we were given something like 30k starting sp (if you picked right, it was notably less if you chose a poor career path while making a character) and the tutorial was basically "Here's your rookie ship, there's the door." Eve is most certainly NOT harder on new players than it was several years ago.

Null being conquered just means that going out there requires that you join an established corp, which tends to be much easier than taking space yourself anyway, and that's assuming you don't want to just ninja-rat, which is still very much doable anyway.

In a nutshell;

Gankers

"We don't want miners in Highsec (Which is less than 20% of the playable space) to be safe; death to people who dislike the way we play! >:D Ignore the 80% of the game universe which is totally conductive to the way we play! We need the entire game world to be completely unforgiving to all players who don't want to fight, get blown up and die! We need ganking to be brainless & easy! New players can go die in a fire!"

Miners & Missioners

"We're sick of people who take advantage of our brainless AFK mining! We shouldn't need to think about our actions or have any consequences for our lack of precautions! We demand the ability to make unlimited money doing absolutely nothing of any actual work! Those gankers should be thankful, we build their ships & get their minerals! RAWR!"

From what I see, everyone is lazy & feels privileged with their position. Really, this is just highlighting the community's complete inability to compromise on issues of any actual worth.

Make ganking harder to do in hisec, but make the Ores/Planets/Anomalies/Missions/Moons found in Lowsec & Nulsec massively more alluring. This would give the people interested in being safe the ability to do so, but it would also bring others to the more dangerous areas where they could be easily killed. This along with other small things would benefit everyone.

Damn it.