Assembly Hall

Just before downtime, a classic EVE moment unfolded, in High Sec.

A player doing a ~mining mission~ had their ore stolen by a player, who gave it back in another can. A yellow can. They then decloaked their Tengu and obliterated the new player, much to the latter's total dismay.

My friends, the time has come. Enough. There are many wolves in EVE, but they are now mocking CCP by overrunning the young sheep, such is their boredom. Null-sec, low-sec, and wormholes are not enough. They insist on killing new players and social orientated players for nothing more than "the payment in tears".

Basic concepts

1. EVE is a business.
2. Sucessful in-game players who pay for their accounts with PLEX do not pay for EVE.
Players who buy PLEX with real money do.

3. CCP spent a lot of marketing effort to get me to return to the game and play.
4. CCP's efforts are being undermined by people in-game deliberately trying to make people like me quit.
5. The different zones of space are intended to have a risk-reward axis, from safer from pvp but poor mission reward/low quality minerals to high risk / high rewards.
6. That design has been totally undermined by new ships, modules and rigs over the years: the gap between rich vet and poor new player is a problem.

Issues

1. Players like myself who were going to buy PLEX have chosen not to, due directly to Hulkageddon. I was going to buy PLEX to get an orca, more PLEX to have a hulk-ready toon moved to a new account. But now it's a bad risk. I know others who were going to buy PLEX to pay for BPOs. But they can't mine the minerals now to use the BPOs so no PLEX needed.
2. CCP has apparently directly responded to Hulkageddon, by offering minign crystal packages to miners, and cruisers to players (which ships are now horribly inflated in price, when the mission payouts for new players are not adjusted).
3. Can a miner, through hard work and industry, make thier on mining ship? No: they cannot. The moon goo debacle is making some corps/allainces super rich, and has destroyed the basic concept of EVE, that you can get there if you work hard enough. T2 Moon goo market has, in effect, failed, which CCP has now tacitly acknowledged by adding T3 ships which take different things to make.

Proposals

A. Double the hold space on all exhumers. It is a joke that some combat ships have more hold space than ORE ships.

B. Fix insurance payouts on Exhumers. A 10 million cost policy should not pay 30 million, when the replacement ship is 300 million. Moon minerals are minerals, too.

C. Fix the DPS/defence impalance. Destoyers were added, then repeatedly upgraded with mods and later rigs, and faction ammo etc etc etc. 4 destroyers will always kill a solo Hulk, in any level of security, even though they can be made for less cost than the Hulk's mining turrets and crystals.

D. Fix social guiild war-griefing. Add a new type of Corp, a "Craft Guild", that cannot initiate wars, be war decced, or own any PoS / soverignty structures. It shouldbe able to be upgreaded to a full Corp for a cost based on a multiplier of its number of members. Social gameplay increases player retention: what we have at the moment are billionaire alts in new player corps who fly ships so large they are effectively immune to griefing, and greifers making people taking the step from solo to team player simply quit the game.

E. Introduce moon mining to 0.7 and lower planets, with mini-variant PoS (not as big, not as efficient, not exclusive per moon, but with Concord protection). Supply and demand has effectively failed many players: there is no way for social / casual players to copy / do ME research / refine / mine moon goos: yet the T1 ships are now effectively obsolete for the game content (mining, incursions, missions are all geared to the higher level ships/modules).

F. Introduce advanced drones for miners. In particular, a dampner drone, that when depolyed hides the site and ship from a system scan. Even if it is tagged "This clever device uses Concord towers to achieve its aim, so simply won't work where Concord are not as common" (e.g. 0.8 ~ 1.0 systems only).

G. Consequences. DUST 514 marines should be given an in-station environment, and when a player is scammed, they should be able to report the scammer to the proper authorities (i,e, a GM as Concord's rep). The scammer should get a security hit, be allowed to have a bounty placed on them, and then DUST marines should be allowed to go into stations and hunt them down and kill them (or not, if the scammer has hired mercs to defend ...). Would I hire marines to go kill certain people? Sure I would, they deserve it, mainly for costing CCP real income due to customer loss.

H. Consequences, #2. An alt should also be allowed to be killed if DUST marines go in after their scammer/wanted toon. If you are running a billion ISK a day sacmmer, every toon on your account should be a target if you get DUSTED. Don't like it? Pay for anohter account, at least CCP will get more revenue for funding the GMs who clean up the mess from scammers.

I. Clarity. A player locking someone in HighSec should not, on the overview, appear the same as an NPC. But a huge PLAYER word over their ship icon, inside the yellow blinky.

J. Podding wanted players in High-sec should immediately pay out the reward. Such a player should have "WANTED" over thier pod icon. (Why? because they currently fly their pods in, have an alt drop off destroyers, gank hulks, then have a blue alt simply bank all the goodies.) In short, Concord is nice, but a joke. Engagement times have reduced so much with the new ships that Concord intervention times are not an effective protection for new players, but have become simply another way by which greifers can prey on new players, to the detriment of the game.

I agree



I agree that this is a problem. CCP's new wardec changes are about to shake things up a bit. Might make things interesting, but its not going to make life any easier for cassual/new players. Your fix idea is terrible though.


I agree on the general theme of the proposal. New players are picked on much too easily. But most of your fix ideas are terrible and you really need to know more about how Eve works before you start proposing changes like these. Hopefully the new crime watch system CCP has proposed will sort alot of those problems out.

It's not griefers vs CCP, it's griefers vs people who don't like to acknowledge that there are other people in the game. The miners should learn that Eve isn't a safe and cuddly place and watch out for griefers, sitting there in a crowd of expensive and untanked ships is just asking for it (and I say that as someone who spent the first part of my career mining).

A. That doesn't even make any sense
B. You clearly don't understand how the insurance mechanic works or why it's that way
C. You can't fix the stupid miners refusing to tank their Hulks or pay attention to the space around them, which is the real issue (it's not hard to put 2 and 2 together if you see a couple negative sec Thrashers show up in the belt)
D. Way too exploitable. Either form a chat channel to hang out and have your social experience in or man up and get a corp, with associated benefits/dangers.
E. T1 ships are still pretty amazing when used right. And look at the fanfest vids and such, they're working on balancing moon mats already.
F. No safety in game where nothing is safe for you, it's way too exploitable and totally against all of what Eve is.
G. lol, scamming is completely in keeping with the game's rules and is, in fact, encouraged if anything. If it looks to good to be true and you click it anyways, it's your fault for not reading the fine print.
H. Alts are completely disassociated with mains, so you'd never know who they are anyways.
I. You can already see that it's a player, you just have to open your eyes.
J. You can already see who has a bounty or not, just learn to set up your overview.

And if you're going to continue to whine about not being safe in Eve, a game where safety is something you fight for, not something that's given to you, then maybe Eve isn't the game for you. The door is that way, we won't hate you if you leave.

They have craft guilds, set blue join private channel. While the Tax is 10% you cant be decced or get decced and you are still able to chunk a pos up.


Also use dem killrights. Dont warn the griefer, or threaten to pod them with your rights, just go and blow their **** up. The only thing needed is Pod kill rights if the griefer pods the victim.

I can sympathise with the view that the Hulk is too weak and too easy to gank.. but the reason why there is so much contempt for miners is for the kind of suggestions that the OP makes. Most people suggest that what is needed is a base tank that has higher resists or a higher shield buffer, but this still wouldn't mean that it was "suicide-gank proof" and therefore still keeps to the "you are at risk everywhere" theme of EVE. What you are suggesting is:

"I'm losing, please remove risk."

We've heard this before - gtfo.

No to the lot of it

Tech 1 is not obsolete, use the tier 3 mining barge in place of hulk if you feel in danger. Also the tech 1 destroyers seem to be working.

And if you want fancy stuff, go to low/nullsec. Not everything is in the newbie safezone, deal with it.

Also moon materials are generally worthless and not worth mining unless it is tech (the fuel you put into a POS is not free, and each month could be in the hundreds of millions, if not a billion). You are free to buy up ones in market and react them yourself. And do tech 2 manufacturing (from what I hear, most people do it in empire, safety and access to market hubs trumps everything else).

Also in addition to properly tanking your ship, I would get a good buffer tank, as big as possible, less likely they could alpha you in a few moments before concord comes.


As to larger cargo holds, maybe? Not too much because that would take away from industrial ships though, who specialize in cargo hauling. If a ship uses more space for mining lasers, less exists for storage. Space is finite in a ship that is not too large

Also..... A lack of understanding aggression mechanics (stealing), players need to seriously learn the game, how did they get into a hulk and not learn anything.


As to punishing scamming, that would be up to players, but being ******** or sapping tards is not a punishable offense by concord, and shouldn't ever get rid of the legal system just to benefit people who are bad at math, business or all around dum dums. Whats next, ordering hits over one isk wars. Also how do you fall for scams? It is absurdly hypocritical to suggest people should be podded over scamming, and on the other hand demanding other player murdering should stop in space. "kill the people I want but not me", yea no, I say anyone who does any kind of highsec murder gets sec status revoked, and face concord retribution. You can try to do anything, but concord will not sanction it, and may punish you if you do something bad.

Over all, lot of bad ideas.

Outside empire you have no concord, you have roaming fleets of reds that use more then a few catalysts to kill you, without fear of any god like concord retribution (and they do collect insurance). Same reds can also hotdrop covert ships, and or do a regular hotdrop.

Risk vs reward is pretty balanced, step into lowsec and you will know.

And yes I did it once to get fancy ores, ship blown up, concord, never came.

No that's the point. Wormhole space and lowsec are safer atm than highsec for Hulk pilots, and gives higher rewards. All you need is an alt on the door in, and a PoS to warp to if anyone trips system, which has your orca hiding inside it invulnerable for the bonuees. Tell me I am wrong.

You know.. I treat Highsec pretty much the same as Lowsec and Null when I'm flying around. I cloak, I use fast aligning ships, Cov Ops, and generally don't stay in one place for long. It's pretty risky, even if you don't have a super pricy ship and fit.

There really isn't any reason not to blow people up aside from the ISK cost of doing it. If you don't care about that, then it doesn't matter unless Security is a problem, and that is the real issue and deterrent. In a short time, with Inferno, that will no longer be a problem, then we'll see how safe Highsec truly is.

This is what I was going to say almost verbatim.