Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Because the founding premise of this game is that we're basically demigods.




The only object of ridicule that I've found are the people who think that real life laws should apply to a videogame like this one.

A videogame with faster than light travel, faster than that banking (you can deposit money across half a galactic cluster instantly. that is scientifically obscene), liquidic physics, teleportation, magic repair beams and last but not least, Space Catholics.

It's hypocrites like you, who only argue for realism when it benefits you, who are the real object of ridicule. And you do it to the detriment of the game, what's more, since CCP has revealed to us that ganking is the single best thing in the game for the overall health and retention of the playerbase.




Speaking as someone with a Bachelor's in CRJ, it very rarely does anything else. (yes, I now have four bachelor's degrees, free college will do that to you)

Murder? Last time I was podded I woke back up, and it didn't even cost me to get "revived" like it used to. And if you want to go the route of property-damage, it isn't exactly inconceivable that vast multi-planetary corporations would turn a blind eye to private contractors who blow up the competition now, is it?

Now, if you want to deal with real murders, how about increasing the penalties suffered by those pilots who go out there committing mass genocide on fleets of non-pod pilots, the corpses PvEers they rack up make PvPers pale in comparison.

But of course, the "RP" angle of your rant was just a thin veil for the second part of your whine. Nut up son, you have to have a bit of a spine for this game.

Cool, I guess that balances just how obscene the insurance payout is for those things. It's barely unprofitable to lose one these days, unless you just bought it.




Then you don't want to actually hit them back, you want arbitrary, petty restrictions. You want an anti fun mechanic that makes it harder to play the game for the profession that already has more mechanical consequences than any other.

One might ask what your problem is.

Ok I have issue with this...please tell me more about the Risk v Reward issue. because if you want balance...we need to add some to the risk averse sheep raking in rewards with very little risk involved. I.E. most of your professional ratters, mission runners, rock humpers.

So please expand on this " risk balancing".

Facpo and loss of insurance, among other things, which lead to huge functional restrictions of what ships they can fly. No other playstyle has to jump through such hoops just to play the game.




You seriously think that you get to talk about "harder" while defending afk haulers and miners?

Unfortuntaely, CCP endorses ganking in easy mode. End of story.

Highsec should simply be renamed into something more befitting its nature.

If mission runners didn't balance risk vs. reward, they would all be purple. I've still seen killmails where they lost expensive ships like marauders to ganks from thrasher gangs worth a fraction (with no profit to be had, either). I'm totally fine with ganks for a shot at that 6B officer module on an undertanked ship, just to be sure.

Also for those PVE activities there is the opportunity cost of time spent (i.e. we can easily disregard the "rock humpers"), which you also have to calculate in the risk column.

And I'm not willing to count the time a ganker sits in station (playing whatever else) waiting for their scout to give an alarm for a minute of 'action' as opportunity cost, sorry.

Yarr!

AFK hauling below a reasonable gank threshold and mining in tanked ships have awful effort-to-ISK ratios. And even if they were, if the AFK part is the culprit, that part should be addressed.

The very fact that ganking activity is not most prevalent in incursion system speaks volumes here. If PVE risk vs. reward was really an issue that's where you would attack. Likewise if purely the profitablility of ganks was a factor. Unfortunately for the gankers, incursion systems change, so that would require some minimal effort. (Coincidentally an effort incursion runners are willing to take...)


Interestingly in conclusion, if you really want to do something about activities with the most lucrative effort-to-ISK ratios, you should switch sides, because ganking is among the most profitable activities at almost zero effort.

'Set Destination' then click 'Autopilot' is an awful effort-to-ISK ratio? You literally click two buttons and then can do anything else you want - go for dinner perhaps? - only to come back to find your stuff moved safely or earn your courier fee. Similarly with mining, you press F1 once, go watch Youtube videos for 10 minutes, before coming back and pressing another button and repeat. Voila! - a hold full of effort-free ore.

Thankfully these risk- and effort-free income sources iare throttled by time, but for the few seconds attention, it is the easiest ISK in the game by far. Nerfing gankers would just make the temptation of AFK income even more appealing.


Don't get me started on incursions. They aren't effort-free, but boy are they are way too lucrative for how risk- free they are. There are no effective ganking strategies against them, which is fine, but not if they make nearly the most ISK/hour in the game. Believe me, if there was a way to reliably catch incursion runners without just steam-rolling them with a 100-man battleship fleet, gankers would be all over that. As it is, a solo or small group of gankers has no reasonable chance to kill them while they are under the protection of CONCORD.

Once the ball is rolling on the nullsec changes and there is a desire to get people back to living there by CCP, expect the risk vs. reward balance to be restored with a significant nerf to incursion income.

Gankers don't put resources or ISK into the economy - they destroy it which is good for the economy overall so even if it were true that it was "zero effort" to gank that would not be a major problem. But really, I am not sure where people get this idea. It has been shown many times by multiple people that best case ganking pays significantly less than L4 mission running, and is certainly not effort-free. The time spent on logistics, scouting, bumping and executing the gank all adds up and requires constant attention from the gank fleet. This is why the only real ganking organization left (aside from a couple professional freighter gank squads) runs a charity-based SRP to fund their ganking operations.