EVE General Discussion

I can't tell if this post is intended to defend the highsec miners or attack them...

Wait, he wasn't referring to gankers?

You guys could just post a roster instead of making us read the same, tired, one-liners. Posts like this OP attract the same mentally challenged every time. Proof of the challenged part? Read what they say post to post. Same thing every time. What's funny is, they don't remember they already said it. It's a new thought in their minds every time!

What they also fail to realize; we see them IRL every day. Ain't it funny how they all seem to look the same?

"Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don't push me, and I won't push you."

you know WOT is full of people who have played the game longer and or paid more than you to be better than you

are you sure that's really a step up?

Congratulation, it seems that the lead developers will evolve this game specially to fulfil your needs for cutting throats, even from the back if required. This is your game now.

It is only unthinkable because you let it.

It it sad but very true.

I know there a few vet's still out there that after they pop your ship will hang around and tell you what you did wrong or won't be totall a$$ about it.
But sadly even those players are walking away tired of the endless rhetoric.

Best of luck to you, by the way Mech Warrior Online should be out come the end of summer.

By the way it has nothing to do with adapt or quit. (another phrase that has been used so many times it is completely meaningless.)
EVE mechanics really haven't changed all that much sense day one.
It is the players that have changed.

This thread touches upon an important point that gets neglected in most of the current discussions:

The problem that miners currently complain about is primarily a problem of culture, not a problem of game mechanics.
However, if culture does not improve it will inevitably be "fixed" by way of game mechanics (which would be to the detriment of everyone, I think).

Activities like suicide ganking, scamming, corp theft, ... add a lot to the game as long as only a small minority actively pursues them. In that case they add some spice to an otherwise bland high-sec experience without seriously impacting the game overall.

However, when/once these activities become mainstream they will quickly stop being an enhancement to the game and become a detriment.

I think most of us know a similar problem from other pvp games - imbalances in classes/builds are generally unproblematic and can often be a boon to the game as long as they are not widely exploited.
But once every drooling idiot starts to use the "overpowered" FotM the game becomes unplayable until the next patch (some games have draft/ban systems that can act as a short-term bandaid in such cases).


Imagine you are a corporation CEO in EVE - one corp theft every few months should generally not be a huge problem. Sure it does hurt and it will make you reevaluate the procedures you had put in place to limit the impact of such thefts - but it should not put the continued existence of your corporation into question as long as you have managed it well. In fact, you might see such events as one opportunity to set yourself apart from less competent CEOs (who will get hit that much harder).
The game rules that allow corp theft work very well in this case - the thief can feel smug about the theft, the corpmembers can feel morally superior to the thief and the CEO can live his dream of being a corp CEO. ^^

Now imagine that instead of one corp theft every few months, you have a corp theft every few days - regardless of whether there is anything worth stealing or not. Free T1 frigates and some stashes of cheap modules? why not steal it when you can?
All material losses aside the morale among the honest member of your corp will drop really fast in such a case - suspicion and paranoia will take over.
In that case you can either lock down everything - don't hand out any assets, do extensive background checks on new recruits, ... - or shut down the corporation. Either way not only do your corpmates and you suffer, all budding corpthieves in the EVE universe suffer as well as there will be one less target for them.


Now, according to regular predator/prey dynamics we would expect that at some point there aren't any corporations left that the thieves could steal from and the number of predators will start dropping.
But this point of view omits that we are talking about a real-life business that needs continued cashflow to operate and has a reputation to maintain (which is not easily restored once it has been destroyed).
The game master has to intervene long before the "natural" return towards equilibrium would set in and when appeals to reason "Can't you see that you are hurting yourself by overfarming your prey?" prove to be fruitless he can only respond by changing the rules.

There is no black/white distinction between "good" and "bad" game mechanics - strict application of the categorical imperative does (in my experience) generally not result in games that are fun to play, imbalances and small exploits are perfectly fine as long their use doesn't spiral out of control - and whether that happens or not is very much a question of community culture. Do you have gamers who just want to pwn using the latest fotm or do you have gamers who share some concern about the state of the game as a whole?


tl;dr suicide ganking, corp thefts, scams, ... are great for EVE - as long as only a few people engage in these activities.
Once they become popular these "good" game mechanics become problematic and CCP would be forced to change them (for business reasons) long before any natural return towards equilibrium could set in - ultimately reducing the scope of the sandbox to the detriment of everyone.