EVE General Discussion

Cool..

More gank targets!!!


I'm joking... a little. This is a cool feature, especially helpful when I am travelling in a shuttle and activate autopilot to go eat, so I will be in the station instead of sitting in space.

I like this feature a lot. It makes auto-piloting easier, and reduces AFK suicide ganks while at the same time increasing targets for more "active" ganking outside of stations (Ganking is ganking, but AFK suidide ganking is really the lowest of the low).

Yeah it has a different symbol in the autopilot list for when it's set to a station too. Not bad at all. Some really good little changes coming through. Like clicking jump on a gate, when not near it, will now warp to 0 and jump for you.

Not sure I approve... Let me start by saying I've never suicide ganked anyone, I live in 0.0, and I really couldn't care less about gankers one way or another. However, for the game as a whole I'm not sure it's a good turn. There's been quite a few tweeks lately that seem to focus on getting rid of gankers and like it or not it is (or was) a legit profession, you could earn a living ganking people that were stuipd. Sure, you still can, but between autopilots docking automatically now, insurance changes, concord changes, etc it really must have put a kink in their income. It also seems a little too much like CCP holding players hands. It seems to go against the cold, dark, do something stupid and get killed universe of Eve and I really see no reason behind it other than making players that aren't at the keyboard safer.

To give it to you another way, one person put it that there is a difference between making a game mechanic harder/easier and making it more or less tedious. It's tedious to salvage every wreak by dragging each one to your cargohold. Putting a loot all button doesn't make the game easier, it makes it less tedious. Now auto-docking at the end of your autopilot doesn't make the game less tedious, not by any reasonably significant amount. It's not hard to autopilot somewhere and at the end of that click the dock button, there's almost no effort at all. What it has done is reduce the likelihood of getting ganked (I did say reduce, I realize they still have 15km while you slowboat to the staiton to catch you). So it's made the game easier on those who aren't even at their keyboard, and harder on those that want to gank afk people for a living. I'm not sure this is what Eve is about.

Again, I say I'm not sure though. I love Eve being a cold dark place, but I also recognize that for it to grow as a game some concessions will have to be made with "casual" players. Perhaps these changes are some that I will have to accept. However, I wish CCP would look at doing two things with this (off the top of my head, maybe more). 1) They should start applying changes like this to highsec only. i.e. if you try this in low/0.0 your ship will jump through the last gate and sit there like always and 2) work on things for gankers to balance the equation, maybe special ships or tools, so they can still have a valid profession.

The first would allow casual gamers to stay in highsec. Yes, we are all on one server, but they have a completely different atmosphere than those living in more lawless lands. Perhaps this could be the beginning of setting the stage for more of a difference for lowsec too. Highsec = casual, lowsec = casual pvp, 0.0 = more hardcore (I realize this is kinda the way it's supposed to work out now, but a lot of people don't seem to think so).

The second would still allow tears to flow and gankers to get their loot from those that are especially clueless or lazy, while making it safer for those that may be lazy in using autopilot, but mitigate that risk by carrying less valuable cargo and want to play casual mode.

All in all, these changes to highsec mechanics, autopilot, and the like are the only thing I don't think I approve of in the new patch. I think they need to be fleshed out more and CCP really needs to look at the impact they will have on the "non-consensual pvp" portion of the player base.

you can now warp to zero and autojump. select gate, press jump instead of warp and it warps to zero and jumps.

woo, reward the manual piloters by making Jump work like Dock does while already in system

Cool I be a bit lazier now.

(if you're wondering im trying to experince this 'suicide gank' phenom but meh.)

Now if MWD or AB would work during auto-pilot it would give the ganksters a little more of a challenge in target practice.