EVE General Discussion

well, that's just d*mb people like you like to think. i thought you quit already? lol

I think everyone acknowledges that criminal gameplay could be improved. There are a lot of mechanics that prevent escalation, player interaction, and continuing conflict between the players, while huge potential places for content - think smuggling, contraband and bounty hunting - lay underdeveloped. I think CCP can, and should completely rethink the highsec/lowsec criminal mechanics at some point in the future and redo that with the goal of enabling more and continued interplay between the players, both criminal, victim and law enforcement.

But this is not what your ideas in the OP do. They pile a heap more of NPC-enforced "consequences" and hurdles for antagonist players to overcome (while adding no additional responsibilities or effort for the defenders) which will limit player-interaction and conflict. The fundamental problem is that CCP has done indeed just this for years, making ganking harder and players safer by tweaking the rules and NPCs, and it has got to the point that criminals can only operate by hiding in stations for most of the time, only briefly emerging to strike at the target leaving only a tiny window for player vigilantes to attack them, while undermining those vigilantes at the same time by having NPC law enforcement that does that better than any player ever could.

Highsec is already extremely safe. Almost all the reasons to attack another player there have been nerfed out of the game, with direct piracy against haulers being one of the last ones left. Making it even more difficult for players to initiate conflict does not seem like a good idea if your a trying to encourage player-driven stories and rivalries to develop and snowball as is the raison d'etre of the sandbox game CCP is developing.

So no, cargo scanning is not "complete crap", it is essential for a pirate to even be able to exist under the current mechanics. If you delete that, then gankers are reduced to mere vandals, just shooting stuff that comes along at random. A pirate needs to be able to assess whether there is profit to be made in hijacking a particular hauler, or they will probably just all go away completely given there is a mandatory cost to attack. Facing vandals rather than pirates looking for ISK is also bad for haulers as it would remove any ability to make yourself safe by carrying a reasonable load of cargo.

If anything, the game needs more easy ways for players to see how much cargo a particular ship is carrying, both for haulers so they can appreciate the risks they face, and for pirates to select targets. Overloaded/underdefended ships should be the target for pirates, not empty ones, so enabling all players to assess the relative risks vs. rewards is imperative for piracy-hauler cat-and-mouse game play to exist. Besides, even if a pirate scans and sees something valuable they want, there is only a 50% chance they can get it, even after sacrificing their ship, so there is still plenty of risk.

So, the TL,DR is that while I sympathize with your desire for more complex, interactive and social criminal mechanics, there is not a simple fix (certainly not by just adding more NPC-enforced hoops for criminals to jump through). All of CrimeWatch will have to be torn out and replaced, much like CCP is doing for structures. I think your ideas would benefit if you play the game some more, including as a pirate, before you start offering up your armchair game change suggestions.

Getting back to actually thinking about improving the game take a look at this and then have a think how synergistic it would be in terms of balancing the one way tracking, sig, speed issues introduced by CCP.

This is a system that needs to be implemented ASAP

While it would go a long way to addressing suicide ganking risk vs reward it would also give a significant boost to some of the underperforming ships and ship classes in the game.

I'd give freighters a x0.5 ratio so using frigate hulls against them would give only 15% damage application, cruisers 33%, battleships 50% and caps 100%



I read and reread this and can't for the life of me figure out what you're trying to say.

I find this a rather annoying notion that people try to imply EVE is strictly a PVP game. Yes PVP is a huge part of it but its entire economy is rooted in PVE game play.

I tried to link a facepalm gif, but the Internets was so tired of this topic it deleted them all so I couldn't.

EVE is a pvp game, it's very nature pits players (P!) against (VERSES) other players (another P!). Non-consensual pvp is present everywhere (and not just combat in space, but in industry, in markets, for resources, etc). PVP is so central to the game people can be engaged in it and not even know it.


The only folks who don't understand what "EVE is a pvp game" means are the folks who have such a narrow idea of what pvp is that they think it involves shooting. Most of my activity involves shooting rats rather than real people (real people have crappy loot and bounties, screw em) and even I know that EVE is a pvp-centric game.

Getting so sick of these sorts of responses on EVERY single idea thread that is worth listening to. Eve players seem to have a meltdown about just about anything that sounds like it isn't about making love to angry young men with psychopathic tendencies. They are like the angry german kid of player bases.

(angry german kid is a fake and funny youtube meme i don't mean to insult german people it was just a creative video by a german kid making fun of angry gamers)

Your points are all well made but I believe the real issue with isn't with high/low sec and much as its with null/W-space.

If you look at the numbers for production in EVE vs destruction, youll find that production is overwhelmingly taking place in high/low sec. Destruction on the other hand is more even with slightly more destruction happening in high/low then null/w-space. So the OP is not wrong in that high/low is more dangerous then compared to null/w-space. I believe this is an incentive issue more then a security issue. However you look at it, its not how the game was intended to be and more destruction needs to be incentive to null/w-space. this is why I think the risk vs reward aspect of eve is too in favor of high/low sec and needs to be readdressed. PVE carebears are not the problem, the disproportion of reward and preceived aspect of risk is the real issue.

small correction

production is taking place in high and null.
not high and low

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ooGHiiERM
0:46 for mining locations (rip npc null and low sec. they empty)

Ganking is a mechanic, it is the risk imposed. The current problem is that Ganking is a act that can be done so cheaply for a group of people that it is insignificant. Undocking a hauler ship is the equivalent of trying to solo a 50 man Tengu Fleet. You are destined to lose. One person loses a decent load on a hauler it can cripple them, one person loses a gank fit combat ship they replace laugh and keep going. My proposition of a higher sec is really the only idea that I think can mend some of this stuff. I also think people who are hauling without a decent amount of support are asking to get blapped and are crying about making bad choices. But this game is constantly advertised as having a solo experience so I think it is something CCP needs to take a serious look at. Everything in EVE is mechanics Risk is built into every single mechanic in the game.

Personally I would love to see the risk to haulers be more of a are these items legal where I am going, am I going to lose this load to a corrupt official, Can this line up move faster so my fuel costs are low enough. Actual trucking sim stuff.

This is exactly the kind of nonsense I am talking about. This pilot is risk seeking. He is making himself a very, very easy target. That the risk averse come along and take advantage of this risk seeking pilot should not bother anyone. Ever. This is how it is in RL and this is how it is in game. Imprudence should be punished and prudence should be rewarded. When this fails to happen you get really bad outcomes. For the pilot above he looses his stuff. For RL we get the financial crisis of 2007/2008.

The solution to the above non-problem is to engage in prudent game play. Not come and ask the developers to make the game safe for imprudent game play. At least not in this game. This is a game where PvP is central to the game. There is obvious and direct PvP where players shoot each other, and there is also anonymous competition via the markets.

The above not a problem that needs to be addressed. In fact, doing so takes away from what EvE is and has been.