Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Recently I shot the wrong person; no, let me take that back, I recently shot the wrong thief, because the overview and local chat no longer allow one to distinguish between thieves. The one stealing your ore looks no different from the one who looted somebody else's wreck. Local chat no longer identifies when infractions are being committed against YOU by turning that person's character red, with a skull, and turning that person in the overview red also, with the skull. Now all thieves just look orange, with a skull.

So, when two thieves showed up and were stealing my ore, one who was actually stealing it in a useless "Merlin," the other who was storing it in his Orca, I knew where my ore was ending up; but they both looked "suspicious," which led me to believe I could shoot at the Orca. Obviously, while I was gone getting my combat ship, some third party (not in their corp) warped in allowing the Orca pilot to steal some useless crap, then warped away--helping to create the confusion I experienced when I tried to defend my ore.

There was nothing wrong with the old system of clearly identifying who (exactly) was the offending party to you, which was previously in place. I would imagine pirate types argued that such a level of specificity was unlike RL. But I would compare this to having one's pocket picked. If someone picks my pocket, and I know they just gave my wallet to someone else, who, therefore, is obviously in on the pocket-picking from the start, am I going to go after the pocket picker, or the person with my wallet? We all know the answer to that.

If someone has committed a theft against some third party, it does me no good to know it, since I can't attack or otherwise bother that suspicious person, anyway, in any manner. In fact, it's confusing, which is the whole point of this new system. You shoot, the wrong person, defending your property; and the cops come and kill YOU. And the thief ends up with kill rights against you for thirty days. More importantly, you lose an expensive ship. Multiply this enough times, and I bet plex sales go up. What do you think?

I would argue that if pirates, about whom I do not give 2 cents (so long as they stay in low-sec and prey on each other), really are just playing out a role, then I believe it is wrong for EVE to give them an unrealistic view of what actual thievery is like in RL. Break into a home you mistakenly believe is uninhabited, and your head gets blown off. Try to rob a liquor store near the freeway, something goes wrong, and you can also end up dead or hunted for murder. Pick the pocket of the wrong person, or receive that stolen property, immediately, and in view of the offended party, and you should experience what things would be like in RL.

I'm not suggesting podding should be ok for thieves in hi-sec, but ship loss and clear designations of who the thieves actually are ought to be available. If the cops can show up immediately, and CCP can explain to me later what the exact moment was and who the exact offending party was, it should be no problem to go back to the old system, and have an even better one that makes thieving teams as vulnerable as they would be in RL. Stolen property could easily be tagged, immediately and the tag could expire in 10 minutes; and recovery of said property by the person who lost it should be legal and inoffensive to anyone involved in its theft.

If CCP can keep track of "offensive" behaviors enough to allow people to legally shoot at each other, then keeping track of who really owns what is something they are already doing. If possession is all of the law in low sec, so be it; but it ought not to be so in hi-sec. And the system for identifying who can shoot who damned sure had not ought to be so confusing and obfuscating as it has now become. If pirates want to play thief in low sec and blow each other to kingdom come, I say "let them." But when outlaws came to town (hi-sec), in the "old west," they often ran into vigilante justice and/or a very good sheriff, which the technology in hi-sec would clearly allow already.

The identification system for thieves has been downgraded without any clear justification for it other than to encourage more thievery, chaos, ship loss, etc., which is fine for CCP to sell more plex. But some of us just want to play this game like an old arcade game. In teams, at times, with those we know and trust in RL; but we also want to be left alone to play by ourselves when those we know and trust are not on line. I don't mind defending my stuff, if needs be; but to have a system in place that clearly favors thieves, when an earlier system worked quite well (and could obviously reinitiated and in an improved form) to clearly identify ALL of those involved in a theft, is pretty transparently a means to foster ship loss, chaos, and bolster CCP's bottom line through the sale of plex. Bring the pirates into hi-sec; but let them experience the true joys that a life of crime would bring with it, in RL, no matter how short that life might be.

There’s an old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But, not being broke doesn’t mean that something cannot or should not be improved. Apparently CCP goes by “If it ain’t broke, then break it a little.”

BaroteToo

The simple solution has been discussed many times before.
Don't mine into jet-cans.

But I do agree, displaying two pilots the same way, without distinction of whom you can shoot is a flaw in the game.

Please make a TL;DR version or more accurately state the problem and your proposed solution in a TL;DR version.

There's a simple solution to that, to be honest.

Shoot the actual thief. He can't steal anymore from you if you blow him up - and you can, given the suspect timer. The current system is actually far less confusing than the old one and boils down to: "Suspect timer = legit to be shot by anyone." (also, podding a suspect is allowed now.)

If an orca went suspect near you, you can shoot said orca and get away with it.

And you would be correct in your "vigilantes" thing, but you do need to consider one thing: if the bandits are more numerous, better armed and more skilled than sheriff and his goons, the town gets pillaged. Want to be safe? Grab a gun and defend yourself against the criminals. Or let them run rampant and cry, much to their amusement.

I-

Are you-

Are you jetcanning?!

Are you seriously still jetcanning in this modern day and age of revamped Retrievers and Mackinaws with vast ore bays that make jetcan mining effectively a thing of the obsolete and uncivilized past?

That, sir, is the crux of your problem.

EDIT: Oh my god, I love F&I. All of the most hilarious comedy threads end up here.

Oh, I see, you guys are just janitors mopping the floor as a public service, eh? As for insulting, you might try not insulting even the lowest form of common intelligence; but that may be a bit of a jump 4u. If it's anybody's who wants it, why should anyone be allowed to shoot or anyone become suspect upon a theft? Oh, that's right. It's NOT theft, it's a public service.

Solution: make ore bays bigger (so that the kills get more expensive)

I was minding my own biz, in my hulk, when another hulk warped to the belt marker, followed a few seconds later by an orca. They were motionless for a few moments, then the hulk warped away. Little was left of the belt at that time, and I was at one end of what had been the middle of it. The orca began crawling toward a spot that appeared nearly half way between me and the other end of the belt. I should have realized immediately; but I didn’t.

When the orca changed course for me, then I knew. So I flew off for a combat ship. Neither ship had appeared suspect at that point. When I returned, both ships appeared suspect (orange with a skull below), which was something completely new to me. Previously, any theft was made known immediately in local chat, even if you were in station, the perp flashed red and had a skull below. In space, it was also quite obvious. Anyway, when I got back for combat the orca was still there, and the hulk pilot was then in a Merlin.

To me, the ore loss was incidental. That belt started out full that day, and I had mined about 80% of it when these guys arrived. A good 85% of my take for the day was already back at the station. I have a Mack and know about their huge ore holds. But I took about 2 years off, and the “suspect” system as well as ore holds were added during that time. Had I been using a Mack, a would have kept all my ore; but a lot more of that belt would have still been present, as a hulk dropping cans and a good hauler can take in about 25% more ore for the same time spent. The Mack just mines slower and you have to fly back and forth more often in it. And it turns and accelerates for warp so slowly it makes my Iteron seem like a sports car.

If I had it to do over, I would just shoot the cans. My problem is with CCP changing stuff that worked perfectly for something that is NOW, quite frankly, crap. Both ships appeared equally suspect to ME (probably because I still had overview settings that had been fine before but needed updating), so I shot at the ship I KNEW contained my ore, hoping just to scare them off. I ended up in an egg, and the thief enjoyed kill rights on me for 30 days. Yeah, thanks CCP for that great improvement you gave to pirates and thieves.

Oh, yes, I could have studied up on all the changes; but I don’t play eve to devise the latest way to steal stuff from people. You know what they call those in RL who are always trying to find a better way to steal stuff from people? "Inmate #" whatever, or “the dearly departed,” or maybe "on the run." Eve “fixed” the identification system, clearly to encourage more theft, and that “suspect” system is pure Bovine Feces. Those Stars start with FEC and end with an S; and there's another E in there, somewhere.

If you’ve been in the game long enough, you might recall that, before nerfed, missiles used to do “splash” damage, and a way to screw pirates in any space, if they were chasing you and using missiles, was to fly close to a gate gun, which, when splashed, blew the pirate away. But the girlie pirates whined, pissed themselves, and moaned. So CCP got rid of splash damage. A missile explosion with no “collateral” damage is supposed to be believable? In what universe is that true?

+1

TL&DR: OP doesn't get the fact that suspect flag system favors those that were hurt by the aggressors and continues to ramble about how he should have read about the changes but didn't. When he gets himself concorded because having warning system which clearly tells you that you risk being concorded by having it turned to red while the default is on green he goes on about some splash and gate gun splash and the splash and collateral damage splash.

TL&DR of TL&DR: This guy is so special he managed to forget to read the changes, turn safeties that try to make konkordokkend foolproof off and somehow managed to get himself concorded on a suspect orca.

Everyone has something to learn from this guy.