Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is terrible. It is going to start sounding like I am in total agreement with a ganker.
I think the essence of what you are saying, is that players feel compelled to min-max their ships to get the best ISK/hour returns. This then leaves them vulnerable to attacks from players who do not stick to one or two damage types.
This is why I support changes to make the AI work more like PVP against players. Sleepers omni tanking and doing omni damage was probably the closest step in this direction.
I think that the way EVE is designed at the present time, it funnels new players first toward mining and then missions. Missions can be good as it builds some combat skills, however, it teaches players to fight AI and not players, there is not enough similarity.

Then the way corps and war declarations are working in high sec, it almost pushes people into staying in NPC corps.

So, I don't have my finger on exactly what it is but I think I am starting to point in the right direction that EVE is funnelling people in the wrong direction and not spelling out their intentions clearly enough.

Taxes won't solve much because they only apply to activities that are solo anyway. If there's any problem that affects everyone from people being immune to wardecs, it's in the form of transport alts. Doesn't matter if it's blockade runners or freighters, the effect is similar. The market is distorted, and a prime driver and opportunity for conflict is lost.

Normalizing mass based docking taxes across empire would have the effect of normalizing them everywhere else, but I think that lead balloon has already sailed. We are a decade beyond the point of wondering why CCP implemented a feature they do not see fit to utilize. Docking taxes are essentially that dumb tattoo on your kid.

The real issue, of course, is war decs. They are the true blunt instrument. For an imprecisely calibrated amount of isk, Concord smiles on them everywhere. That doesn't really make sense from a political, economic or role playing perspective. It's also rather silly to go from safe-ish some places to not safe everywhere with the mere flick of a button.

Let's make wardecs have a geopolitical component. Make incremental wardecs that can cover individual solar systems, constellations, regions, or even factions. At each increment, increase the cost. As a compensation, a war dec in a single system should cost next to nothing, even against a very large organization. Whoops, there goes Jita.

If I'm the director a mining corp, and a rival group is hammering the belts too hard, then let's have our own private little scuffle. It might not seem significant to veteran war mongers, but it could seem quite significant to that group, and that actually kinda matters in a big, cold and indifferent universe.

As far as Concord is concerned, all of our corporations are actually formalized gangs. On a larger scale, they're not too dissimilar from Westphalian states. Letting the neighborhood gangs squabble over and establish turf keeps the conflict from sprawling out into more civilized areas.

The effect of this means corps carving out their own territories, using new trade routes, and making moves against other groups that are calibrated to their capabilities. That said, some kind of visual warzone indicator on the HUD would likely be very beneficial to all involved.

I would love to put a permanent wardec on all the mining corps that think it's acceptable to mine the asteroids in my home system - but only in my home system. You want to mine? Go one jump next door. Leave my spacerocks alone, you filthy greed-infested poachers.

I don't want to make them stop mining; I just want them to not mine where I live. Keeping the wardec limited to just that one system would encourage them to mine somewhere else.

I take everything you say about new players with a pinch of salt. I have first hand experience of you and yours piling in on a newbie corp.

So, some veterans banding together and fostering new players is a bad idea? Instead we should have a corp full of new players ripe for the slaughter?

The higher bar to entry means there is more likely to be a mixed bag.

Err, no.

A higher bar to entry means that don't reach that bear are unable to participate at all unless they meet the criteria arbitrarily set by an established group that is willing to break that barrier for them. The criteria also tend to be quite high and the cost of joining an established group is your independence.

Moreover a group of newbies in a corp that wardec someone are going to be the aggressors, they only people who're likely to be "ripe for the slaughter" are going to be the other newbies they declare war on. Except in that circumstance the defenders might actually be able to defend themselves successfully as they're fighting other newbies, rather than fighting me in a faction cruiser with links and neutral reps.

Right now we have a situation where highsec PVP doesn't have any low skill aggressors at all, you're either not at war at all, or you're at war with someone who will beat you every time. Having new players in a dedicated highsec PVP corp that has existed for 5 years does not diminish the capability of the highsec PVP corp because the defender is at war with the whole corp not just the new players.

The entire system has created a meta that puts people like myself in a tremendous position of advantage, new people can't get their foot in the door, defenders haven't got any experience at defending themselves against lesser threats by the time they suitable targets for us and nobody is willing to try and fight their own battles so they pay us to do it for them.

It's ridiculous and it all comes from carebears are in favor of any barrier they can possibly have between them and PVP. At I feel like they're reaping what they've sown, they get to enjoy endlessly cycling through being at war with every different highsec PVP entity, can't possibly hope to defend themselves and so have to pay the same people who declare war on them for help to defend their assets.

It's the consequence of people irresponsibly desiring gameplay changes that appear to benefit them without regard to the long term results. I'm not even sure if it's even reversible at this point.

Here's an interesting, perhaps problematic, idea I've had: any ship fitted with a module or drone that would provoke a CONCORD response if used against a neutral, is freely engageable by anybody without the aggressor being subject to a CONCORD response or sec status loss. Basically, undock with a gun, launcher, ECM, combat drone or similar fitted to your ship, and you can be freely shot by anybody in highsec. (Logi will continue to go suspect if they rep anything.) If you wanna shoot, you can be shot at.

So you want to fly your Catalyst around while looking for AFK Hulks to gank? Feel free, but that fleet of Vexors flying around looking Hulks to protect might want a word with you. Perhaps you should always bring a mobile depot?

Have a Hulk you want to AFK park in a belt with drones out set to aggressive to protect against rats? Feel free, but be prepared that everybody who sees you will want to take a shot at you. Perhaps you can active tank a Skiff, or perhaps you'll be better off arranging with other players for protection from rats. Perhaps they'll charge you a fee and if you don't pay they'll leave you to the rats. Perhaps you'll have to join a corp you share the profits with, and the corp can run protected mining ops.

Freighters and travel inties and barges without offensive modules would still have CONCORD "protection", and of course still be subject to suicide ganking and Machariel bumping. But the gankers could perhaps be intercepted by white knights who don't have to wait for the gankers to go criminal. And in turn, the gankers can bring a fleet to counter the white knights. Who can bring a counter-counter fleet to counter the counter fleet...

Security missions in highsec will take a big hit, though. Noobs trying to build up standings by running L1s and L2s will be SOL. Blinged ships running L4s and L5s will be hunted mercilessly. Same for Incursion runners. Maybe that's a good thing, though? I run L4s in null and use my friends around me to know what's going on and whether it's safe - but with highsec being so much busier, perhaps that's not an option. But creative players might figure out ways.

I think this would open up some very interesting play styles. True player-based police forces could be a thing. Police corruption could be a thing. Protection rackets. Players will have to cooperate more to get stuff done, and be subject to interactions with hostiles more as well. Wars will become more complicated as blinged T3s looking for month-old wartargets will be targets themselves. Structure bashing will gain a lot of risk.

Anyway, not sure about this idea. Could be crap. I dunno. Any feedback? Has it been discussed before?

I totally agree with the OP on this part.
Players that play this game for years that are still under concord protection in high sec is just weird.




Tax punishment? Most nullsec corps have higher taxes then npc corps, cause they have a lot of bills. srp's etc.

Since you asked this idea is pure crap.
I could quote the whole thing but why bother this is the only section that is needed to illustrate just how bad this idea is.


While I am not advocating more protections for our new players, I am saying that what protections exist need to stay in game and in force and this would remove all of them.

Overall this idea would make defending yourself against ganking virtually impossible and that is a change that we do not need.

Momentary derail, apology in advance...

I would like to at least Choose which NPC corp. I get dumped into after leaving a Player run corp. The sandbox right now makes me a grocery shelf stocker... Not quite clothing retail work, but near the same level of soul crushing. The idea of at least a few of the NPC corps at war with each other at times that aren't on a time table (so jumping isn't planned just to avoid it!) sounds rather interesting to me. The Factional Warfare is fine for some that want that on their minds every time they undock. Those of us in NPC corps we didn't even get to choose, ummmm, I'm not ready for Factional but dodging and ganking others in that week's opposing NPC corp could break some out of the NPC corp grind, and into player run corps since the overall 'protection' would be somewhat mitigated. After all, the CEOs and directors of these NPC corps don't exactly have ship replacement programs, more reliable fleet assistance, or the other shiny things that come from leadership that's another person(s), not a line of programming in the game.

Just a random thought, user mileage may vary.

>Jeven