EVE General Discussion

Because it would be nice to not see more CCP staff being laid off and to see more budget for improvements. It's not exactly a sign or a healthy game.

Absolutely, but I've have faith that CCP would do as much as they can to improve the game if they had the time, personnel and money to do it.

I don't want to see it crapped up by casual mentality either. Luckily, most casuals aren't the type of players to complain. And at the same time, I'd like to not see it crapped up by risk averse gankers who think they are in fact good gamers, who unfortunately are very vocal.

Why?
The only reason I see presented for this is because new risk averse players might complain about existing mechanics and therefore the game would rapidly become WoW. Basically the slippery slope fallacy.

To the OP.
Yes you are correct. What you are experiencing is indeed "Greifing". This is by design. Don't think that the Developers don't note what is going on. They do. They also note that the playerbase money coming in is relatively stable. So they let it be. You are left to deal with their decisions. It kinda makes the game even more of a thinking persons game.

If you are under a WarDec, study your enemy. Fortunately the killboards reveal a host of information about them. Study their kills. You will note that they are creatures of habit. Look at their ship fits, and what ships they run. Talk with some of their victims. The way they operate and where they operate is habitual. They can't help it. They have a specific skill set their ships and weapons reveal how they attack. This gives you an advantage. You can tailor your ship fit and skills to cover their ammo damage and counter their tactics.

Plot where they have made kills and you will have a sphere plot showing where they are most likely to be. Being "gank aware" you can tag them as terrible and have heads up for every system you enter. If you see they are in a system, don't "gate to gate" if you are traveling. If you are missioning and see them enter the region, bail and head to a safe spot. Not a gate. Being "gank aware" will keep you a hard target to corner and having to wait frustrates them to no end. Make them work for it. Use Teamspeak or Ventrilo to keep each other aware of where the enemy is or has been recently.

Again. Research your enemy. Killboards also supply information on who was in the party with them when they nailed a victim. Spreadsheets are your friend. You will start to see associations and patterns on who likes to work with who and sometimes they can surprise you.

How to combat them. If you have your ships properly fitted to combat their damage types thats a plus but if you are not interested in pvp you have a bit of a pickle given that this game is pretty much pvp centric.

Bounties are worthless. Sure you can hire an odd man out to post the bounty so its not traced to you but if the bounty is high enough the crim will simply have a friend kill them and then they share the bounty.

Hire a merc corp. Of course spend some time researching them so you make sure there are no associations between them and the corp that wardec'ed you. You can negotiate terms for length of time, number of pods and so on. Its expensive but can be fun.

Create a PvP wing in your corp. Find some aggressive PvP'ers and supply them with funds, ships and weapons. Lots of PvPers enjoy just the PvP side of the game and are bored with the rest. If you are under wardec it gives them lots of targets to shoot and have their type of fun.

Looking at your corp you like the building, missioning, mining and logistics side of the game. Having a corp centered around that has put a huge bulls-eye on your head. Why? Complicated. Current state of the game has the major corps as the Mafioso or Narco-gangs. Their renter corps are their slaves (isk farmers) so if your corp is selling material into the market you are depressing the mineral and material prices. So you will find that many of the PvP corps (Like Core) who grief corps like yours are cut-outs supplied by the mega-corps. Neat huh? Just like governments and gangs in the real world. Just be grateful that none of this spill into RL or you might find yourself hanging from a bridge with a sign hung on you saying "Get out of Jita".

Eve is fun and is a huge mishmash of cool people and complete psycho's with a bit of mafia tossed in.

Alternatively, drop corp and live in an NPC corp. It's much much easier, and it has the added benefit of making many wardeccers sad. Feeding them kills is what they want, and they are experienced enough to know they'll win. From CCPs data (CREST), around 92% of all wars which resulted in at least 1 kill were won by the aggressor. So save time, effort and hassle - join an NPC corp.

Uh, isn't changing the game to make it more appealing/easier/whatever for casuals/noobs/yo mama the topic of discussion?

If our premises are that we cannot attract and/or hold these players with the game as it is, and that they are a market we can/should/must attract, then they are in some sense forcing change just by existing, whatever about what they achieve after they're here.

But at this point the conversation is so scattered it's actually hard to tell what it is/was/should be about, so I'll move on to the more pertinent question of how many slash seperated options in a sentence is too many/just right/not enough.

LOL, yes, one you say about other people, and one you say about yourself. The fundamentals of them though are both the same.

Uhhh for fun? It's the same reason I play games on the hardest difficult. One shotting a boss isn't exactly entertaining, and neither is ganking a group of people who have no chance of defending themselves.
Turning this question around though, why would ANY high sec PVE player choose to defend themselves against wardeccers like people keep suggesting rather than just moving to an NPC corp? They won't be sure they could win, not by a longshot, so why should they try?

I'm OK with that. Suicide ganking takes more effort than wardeccing noobs, and for the most part requires certain target ships and builds to be worthwhile.

To a degree, perhaps. It's not about making them permanently safe, it's about giving them enough footing to actually enjoy the game before unleashing all hell on them. In no way should the game become space WoW like some people seem to think would happen if they appealed at all to the casual market. There's easily enough room to accommodate both markets with some small concessions, a flesh out of some of the mechanics and moving some risk and reward from the NPE into the later game mechanics (so noobs gain less but risk less and can risk more to gain more by moving into the rest of the game).

What if "unleashing all hell on them" proves to be better at keeping players than letting them soft pedal for a while 1st.



The problem with trying to walk a tight rope is that one false move results in either you falling off completely or you getting a bad case of crushed nuts.

That is what you suggest CCP does: take a successful focused product and unfocus it (however slightly) in an attempt to gain more subscribers.

Where is the proof that that has ever worked in any game? Can you name one game that was hard core that did this and suddenly it's filled with new players?

I'm betting you can't, while at the same time we CAN name games that tried that and ended up failing (SWG) or being seriously hurt (Mechwarrior Online). I'd hope CCP isn't dumb enough to gamble with their (to date) one successful product.

So instead of realising EVE isn't for them on day 1 they'd realise it on.... day 10? If you could stretch the themepark phase out long enough you might actually make some money, from 1-month-sub-churn as people signed up for the themepark and then quit as they are forced out of it, but isn't the problem at hand subscriber retention?

(Of course, the solution in that case would be to extend the themepark phase a bit. And a bit more. And a bit more.)

If you are genuinely talking about tapping into a market of new players who will like what EVE is and will hang around and actually benefit the game (financially and otherwise), but who require concessions made to the difficulty at the start, you are describing a hypothetical market whose members can handle EVE in it's full arguably-complex arguably-hardcore glory, but who can't handle the challenge of learning a new game. That market doesn't exist (or at least is tiny).

It's the old give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish. The issue is people not wanting to learn to fish. So how about we give them a free supply of fish for a while? Problem is, no amount of being handed fish teaches someone how to fish, and worse, with the fish being handed to them they may get bored and leave, missing out of a world of fishing for themselves.

That's not true.

Someone who is risk averse doesn't like to take risks and will therefore look to avoid taking them at all. In avoiding risk, they remain ignorant of key game mechanics. When their ignorance bites them, they often blame others instead of themselves, and or the system for there being any risks at all. They fight against the risk-reward structure of the game, and become increasingly unhappy that it's not the way they want it.

Conversely. Someone who practices risk mitigation will take risks, and having taken risks gain knowledge that helps them in future. With practice comes the ability to manage risks and keep them wthin a threshold they are happy with. They do not want others to keep them safe, but instead take their own safety into their own hands. They do not shrink from danger, but instead embrace it. They take advantage of the risk-reward structure of the game to seek increased rewards, and constantly improve when faced with new challenges and emergent gameplay. In short, they have run with risks instead of shrinking from them.

No, there really isn't. in both cases if the final amount of risk is beyond minimal then the activity doesn't happen.

It is possible for people to mitigate risk and still take on moderately risky odds, by most highsec wardeccers don't. Their killboard isk efficiencies are just way too precious to do anything that has even a slightest chance of damaging it.