Crime & Punishment

I have a different insight,as I believe that the answer is much more complex than the question, no disrespect intended.

Consider if you will the shift in focus on Nul Sec entities in recent years, the rise of the Super Power blocks that offer relatively safe access to ratting and anomalies that permit passive players to generate considerably more isk in Nul sec in dead end systems than by running Lvl 4 missions in hi sec, there are intel channels and with the blue donut there is quite a reasonable degree of safety, as such a renter in a major power block is safer than your average AFK retriever in hi sec, because the probability of CODE. showing up is pretty much Nil, with minimal awareness you can watch an intel channel and see potential hostiles incoming to your location. All of these things have lead to an increase of activity in Nul sec on the part of "Carebears" as such if you reduce the number in Hi Sec you reduce the statistical probability of them fighting, for example if for ever 100 people dec'd 1 would fight, you would need 100,000 people to generate a response of 1000 which is greater than the player base as it stands (Based on average numbers online).

In effect the economics of Eve has meant that there are less people in Hi sec and that means less people who may choose to fight back.

It is also worth mentioning that the average number of players online at a time is relatively low compared to what it has been in the past and the increase of wormholes means that less people are spread over a larger area, again reducing potential fighters.

Also if you reflect on the timescale you have highlighted, the last 6-9 months, is also the period which encompasses the "World War Bee" phenomenon, which has seen various people join the MBC in a fight against the Imperium/CFC which has again drawn the combat inclined hi sec member to move to join one the entities engaged in hostilities, all be it maybe temporarily but again, the movement of combat inclined people is away from hi sec.

And this is only highlighting a fraction of the sociopolitical influences on the Carebear turned fighter paradigm shift.

I think that also CCP has had a massive influence in regards to game mechanics, more and more ships or modules are being introduced which increase survivability in Hi sec further reducing participation in PvP on the part of the Carebear; for example the Vic Yacht with the cov ops cloak, the leopard which is all but invulnerable in the hands of an alert pilot; at least within hi sec. More cov ops ships being introduced, Astero, Stratios for example, T3 Destroyers with the instawarp flaw. If you look at a majority of the recent changes from the perspective of a Merc it seems to be slanted in favour of the victim and not equality, even something as simple as the tierecide of the warp disruption modules, this removed the 9km Meta scram and increase the CPU usage whilst reducing range in many cases making it harder to fit and less effective when you have fitted it...contrived or not CCP is making EvE an environment that makes it easier to avoid combat should you wish to which is further reducing the number of potential fighters.

The removal of the Watch list in favour of the Buddy list; there is no doubt that doing so has been both a benefit and a hindrance, yes the nasty Merc's can't add you to a list and see when you are online, run locates and come kill you...but by the same token, you can't add them to your list and see when they are online and in what numbers so you can't conceivably consider taking a defense fleet against them as you have no perception of their strength at the time unless you have alts out of corp/alliance but this requires planning for such an eventuality, not something a non combat focused person would likely undertake.

And of course the rise of bigger Merc alliances, the larger one's capable of fielding larger fleets and in some cases with Eye watering amounts of Logi, the Suspect flag for Neutral logi doesn't work, because anybody not in an NPC corp is basically executing their entire corp by engaging the Neutral logi as the aggressors on the kill mail are effectively adding their names to a hit list.

And finally, education, people are learning, they fly more shuttles than noob ships or T1 frigs, the cloaky warp trick, Warp Core Stabs (in some cases at least), use alts in bowheads or third party haulers to move expensive ships, traveling by wormhole, Nano Interceptors which are almost unlockable and can travel in Nul sec through bubbles which has further increased their usage.

But if I was to give a one line answer, those who want to fight have moved elsewhere to do it...there is no fight in Hi Sec because those that are left have no fight in them...that is what I fear is the reality.

Forgive the typos etc please, typing this on a phone was something of a challenge.

Pvp went from people having fun to killboard whoring.

No more will you see wars where solo cruisers try to get some good pvp in, you'll see the cheapest/fastest ships enemies can fit built around gang warfare....and if they're solo, they will not bother engaging.

Pvp has become killboard whoring. That is not fun for most pvpers. To me in wars I would lose whatever ship i was flying to fight back, thats pvp, but even now i get more flame than anything because of "my killboard" that reflects nothing but irrelevant epeen that could be rectified with cloaking and sniping in fleet battles in seranen and the like. -.-

even now i get more flame than anything because of "my killboard"

Yes, killboards drive a lot of risk aversion.

However, back in the days of can flipping they were the same they are now.

The difference is that back then fights were largely consentual. That is to say you would try to look weak in order to excite that "opportunist" spirit in a mission runner or carebear. I had a "Mighty Mouse" title on battleclinic back then because I'd killed so many cruisers with a t1 frigate. That was how we played.

As for wars, it was the same gig. We would show up with whatever would inspire the other team to undock.

The problem now is that a small beatable force can't afford to be blowing 50 mil per war... You have to pool your assets now because it is so damn expensive. All of the casual fighting mechanics are gone.

Thus, 200 skilled pvp'ers team up with some sugar daddy who guarantees 15 wars a week. Sugar daddy makes everyone promise not to fly poors, always be on comms, and such in order to guarantee his money goes far.

Now they're too damn hard to fight so they need even more wars just so they can shoot some slop targets. Luckily, there are 200 of them so they can blanket Declare war on loads of people if they all pitch in.

4 years later, nobody wants to fight aggressors.

This post retribution war system (and crime system) sucks.

cant we just settle all this over a great honor brawl in pvp vargurs in rancer drunk and on comms?

ThunderDome Rules, 2 Drunks Enter 1 Drunk leaves!!!!

2 drunk fleets enter 1 drunk fleet leaves??

2 drunk fleets enter 1 drops a cyno inhibitor, 1 fleet leaves

To be fair, you do have an impressive 90/90 rating on zkill... 90% cuddly, 90% gangs... It does not inspire awe or terror, more of an "awww, look at the cute fuzzy harmless thing". Just saying



I miss those days....a lot.

I agree the system sucks...but I admit I don't really understand the seeming isk shortage among PvPers...

Isk is ridiculously easy to make. Admittedly since I'm not opposed to carebearing it up with some PvE from time to time I've become fairly space-rich over the years here - but even in just pure PvP my wars almost always pay for themselves...generally several times over.

In the old days when war was cheap, I got by looting the battlefields after the smoke cleared - and even when I lost the battle I generally came out even or ahead in isk.

Although things have changed - war costs more and people fight less....economically war has never been better. People who won't fight willingly still derp around like the brainless idiots they are in faction fit battleships or expensively loaded haulers...and people who want to avoid a fight go around throwing out generous surrender payments or unanchoring juicy control towers for me to steal. Even if I wasn't already space-rich, I make a lot more isk now in war than I ever used to. Less fun, but more isk. So that just seems like a flimsy excuse for disbanding the old small groups that encouraged combat and banding together into giant blobs.




Incidentally, since it keeps coming up, it is no mystery how the giant hub-camping alliances came into being:

Carebears are idiots. Often rich idiots. The vast majority of them truly do not seem to have fully functioning brains. The majority of them have always made themselves juicy, no risk targets to be farmed by those who seek isk. Farming them is PROFITABLE.

And ultimately even as we have seen the decline/utter loss of carebears with some fighting spirit who flew PvP ships in war-times (generally quite cheap on the whole, not worth much for someone seeking isk gains nor killboard stats)...EVE has seen a vast increase in the population of utter morons who make themselves valuable targets to be farmed. And CCP keeps throwing isk at them so they can become even more profitable targets without any real effort.


From there, is it any wonder that with the new trends towards simply dropping corp/logging out and assorted other war-dodging tactics that suicide ganking has seen a massive rise? Suicide ganking is currently one of the most *profitable* occupations in EVE. And you don't even have to scout seriously to find targets - they all go down the same couple of well-known pipelines, generally on autopilot.

They may be unwilling to fight back anymore, but they are literally *begging* to die repeatedly.



None of this, of course, is relevant to this topic. But those are my thoughts since the topic does keep getting derailed in that direction. I have no sympathy for those who are being farmed for kills. They have brought it on themselves.

I just miss the *other* carebears - who hopped into cheap, non-kb padding ships and put up a fight.

C'est La Vie