Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The current aggression/CONCORD mechanics create a "victim mentality" in high-sec carebears, so I'm glad that the whole system is being overhauled. This "victim mentality" is really bad because it actively pushes carebears away from PvP instead of making them more comfortable with the idea of PvP. Generally speaking, CONCORD is a joke from the victim's point of view because it provides revenge instead of actual justice, gives the initiative to the ganker, "punishes" the attacker with a very temporary probation, and provides no restitution for the victim. High-sec carebears thus have to adopt a meek risk avoidance attitude instead of aggressively working to secure their homes.

As others have hinted at, there's a big difference between security and "law enforcement." CONCORD's (weak) security just encourages increased passivity in high-sec carebears whereas we should have "law enforcement" which relies on community action to enforce the law in high-sec. (Plus, community increases sub stickiness and community PvP makes the transition to a PvP mentality a bit easier.) In other words, the current security mechanics result in "Waaaaaah! CCP save us!" instead of "Call out the local watch and round up a posse, we gots us some vermin to hang!"

As others have pointed out, the greater the high-sec carebear mentality grows, the more economic reasons that CCP has to make high-sec a 100% PvE.

Timer Length
My initial criticism of the initial crimewatch system is how short the timers are. Realistically, if someone attacks someone in high-sec there should be serious repercussions, such as a month long "kill on sight" flag against the perp where the sentry guns, faction police and deputized "player police" can attack the perp whenever they trespass in the faction or corp space where the infraction(s) occurred. Short suspect/criminal timers favor the perps over the law abiding citizens and are insulting.

Now before people whine about how "unfair" that is, it should be possible for perps to avoid or kill the sentry guns and faction police in order to gank high-sec, however, it shouldn't be easy, especially if local citizens have paid to beef up security. And even then, the perps should have to deal with player based "police" units with badges (think deputized players) that allow them to kill perps on sight. The more "civilized" the system is, the more effort it will take to gank again in high-sec. Ideally, it should take a major raid by an organized group (*cough*Goons*cough*BurnJita*cough*) to effectively attack a system like Jita 4-4 and it should be easy for the citizens to join in the defense of "their" home.

More importantly, the local high-sec community members should be able to pay into their defenses to make their neighborhoods and trade routes safer, such as buying additional sentry guns, more faction police, having faction police patrol the mining belts, etc.. It wold be an isk sink and gives the non-combat oriented players a stronger voice in the security of their neighborhoods. They should also be able to vote on how and when the sentry guns and/or faction police attack someone. For example, the Jita 4-4 community could implement a "one strike and you're banned from the station grid" rule, or that anyone with a personal sec status of 2.5 or less on the station grid is kill on sight, and/or that perps have to provide X amount of restitution to the victim before being removed from the KoS list.

Regaining security status
Tags to regain security status? Stupid, stupid, stupid. How about paying restitution instead? If CCP is going to track the amount of isk lost in a war dec, then it should be easy to track the isk loss of a gank victim. The perp can get "forgiveness" by paying off the victim via restitution.


From the RP perspective, high-sec is supposed to be "civilized" space, providing a stable environment in which to perform trade, manufacturing, etc.. It doesn't have to be completely locked down, but even in the Wild West, towns didn't allow a policy of "you can mug whoever you want, just as long as the sheriff kills your horse." Instead, the citizenry got together, hunted you down, and if they caught you, built a gallows in the town square and hung you by the neck until dead.

Crimewatch, even with its improvements, could still learn a lot about community, justice, and law enforcement from the US Wild West period.

[quote=stoicfaux]


Ideas, discussion, criticisms, thoughts, & even trolls are welcome.

I'm the OP and I'm a huge carebear, so much of a carebear that I pee rainbows .

The problem as I see it is that a lot of highsec dwellers see concord as the be all and end all of their security, I think that Tippias sig says it best “If you're not willing to fight for what you have in ≡v≡ you don't deserve it, and you will lose it.”

If players are actually responsible for their own security with minimal backup from concord it would still provide a safe place for noobs to learn the game, but instead of concord providing that relative safety it would be players themselves that provide it with concord as a last resort, much like a SWAT team. The new aggression mechanics that are coming in with Inferno should provide opportunities for us carebears to either hire ourselves some security or actually team up and provide our own. The basic premise is that it opens up new styles of gameplay for those players that have yearnings to be something more but don't have the knowledge, knowhow or the mechanics to back them up.