EVE General Discussion

Could any kind soul explain to me why on earth they removed hyperdunking?

Adding 33% hull resist as well is not making it alot easier to gank.

1. Because huperdunking allowed a very limited number of players (even a single player) to score expensive kills while using a whole lot of legal, but still unintended game mechanics. Yes, hyperducking took an enormous amount of effort and concentration, and, on the contrary, you need almost zero effort to disrupt it, but, knowing how much people in local care about random freighterbears, it worked regardless. Once the word got out, it was a matter of time before everyone and their mother started practicing it. So CCP allowed it while it was done by the chosen few, but closed down the shop several months later.

I used to hyperduck myself and enjoyed it while it lasted, but I don't think I really hated to see it go. The necessity to commit a certain number of people (or alts) to down a freighter is logical and often presents way more challenge than when you're doing everything yourself, albeit at the cost of increased personal effort.


2. The thing is, highsec has always been like that unwanted foster kid, who is fed and dressed by consciencious parents, but isn't really cared about. I think, the main cause of this is that the developers don't really see the general picture of highsec warfare from the inside, from the viewpoint of a ganker, an anti-ganker, or a wardeccer. Instead, they rely on the feedback from the forums, which doesn't really work when there are two polar camps that are constantly fighting tooth and nail over any change in the game balance, however small it may be.

As a result, the devs and the highsec communities have different perceptions of the same issues. For instance, the said 33% buff came in pair with the buff to wreck hitpoints. Now, the latter affected the rest of EVE as well, but the topic of anti-gankers shooting freighter wrecks was the focal point in this change. It was a nice change for the gankers for sure, but I don't think it was all that crucial: sometimes AG succeeded at ganking the wreck, sometimes not, but overall, it created a whole new layer of interactions between gankers and AG, and their struggling for freighter wrecks was fun to watch and take part in.

So, when the balance team buffed freighter EHP by almost 50% in total, they thought that the wreck buff would balance it out, since they saw it as a very important thing for gankers. However, many gankers perceived this move as something different: "Here, take this candy, and in exchange we're going to **** you in the ***, **** on your face and *** in your mouth". And don't forget, the change didn't only affect freighters, it nerfed all ganking across the board.


Anyway, how can I conclude this? Well, we haven't yet come the the point where nothing at all can be ganked in highsec, but this point is getting pretty damn close. For years, CCP have relied on crutches in highsec, and the Crimewatch system didn't fix that. Crimewatch had its own imperfections and vulnerabilities, and the devs, once again, have used crutches to deal with them. However, on order to really fix the balance, we need to seriously rethink certain crucial game mechanics (yes, bounty hunting, I am talking about you).

You can't make the current system better with simply buffing barge or freighter EHP, saying: "They'll just have to bring more people, and everything will be fine". I think, we already have a kind of consensus that the N+1 logic doesn't make the game more fun. Carebears don't get any smarter from EHP buffs - quite the opposite, more likely; AG don't get any more incentives to prevent ganks - those who do are just a few bitter individuals. More and more AG are turning into ninja looters these days and don't care about the gankees, either. Ideally, they should be encouraged by the bounty hunting system, which has been broken since conception.

CCP also need to be very careful about who they are listening to when implementing changes to highsec warfare. Historically, highsec undesirables have been a minority, barely represented in the CSM and at fanfests. And on EVE-O, both gankers and AG are extremely radical in their views, because, seeing their bitter enemies on the very same forums, they think (and, I guess, they do have a point here) that they have to cry the loudest in order not to see their camp nerfed by CCP. This is why both the "grrr code" and "AG fails non-stop daily" narratives are so strong in the community.

All of this is my personal opinion on the matter and may not necessarily be true.

I never quite understood the purpose of HiSec. ie. CONCORD is there to prevent/punish one-sided forced engagements but it still allows non-consensual wardecs...

CCP probably wants to add some risk to everything but to be honest, I often feel they misjudged the ...err, devotion of certain players (like multiboxing an entire fleet of catalysts or forming entire alliances for the sole purpose of having 100 active wardecs)

It's just a shame to see hyperdunking go, the most fun time I had in this game was when I was hyperdunking.

Cheers, above poster. I was wondering what everyone was blathering about.

Actually, CCP never called out hyperdunking as an exploit, but would eventually make some changes to mechanics that would remove it.


Hyperdunking was hard to set up, and very easy for anti-gankers to mess up. So it went either way.

There was not much fanfare in its demise because even those who could manage it saw it as a lot of work for the same return as a usual "gank cats fleet" operations they normally deploy.

Im gonna go ahead and quote you, but yeah I remember reading that as well.
Guess carebears is the new market.

Because CCP hates anything that's profitable.