EVE General Discussion

One aspect to consider about the relative attractiveness of low sec may not be to simply look at it as gradiating things based on what the game likes to deliniate regions on the risk/reward curve but actually looking at "unique" (key word) features that are applicable only to this specific region.

I kind of touch on the idea with my proposal for smuggling with additonal unfleshed out comments regarding actually expanding a "black market" kind of operation applicable to only to the low sec zones.

So take a look here a see if the additions might help induce some extra elements to spicing up low sec gameplay: It's just criminal - smuggling

This is true. However the only content Lowsec piracy has ever received has been its own content whereas every other aspect of the game has been giving new content by CCP.

• Jump Freighters, and capitals/cynos in general allow nullsec alliances to move all their supplies out to their space with zero risk, never leaving the safety of docking range in their chosen lowsec staging system. There is no 'supply interdiction'.
• Faction Warfare... takes a large chunk of the pirate player-base and instead turns them against each other in a controlled environment. FW is something lowsec dwellers can do in addition to piracy, it detracts from piracy instead of helps.
• Sovereignty mechanics, more incentive for large groups of combatants and their carebear support crew to be in null instead of owsec.
• Wormholes, a new mechanic that also rewards much higher than lowsec and draws some of the potential pvpers away.
• Incursions, a new mechanic that allows highsec players to make obscene amounts of ISK with next to 0 risk.
• Wardec changes, new incentives for highsec based PvPers to form mercenary corporations and draws even more potential pvpers away from lowsec.

The list goes on, and unless I missed an expansion somewhere FW is the last thing to be added to lowsec since gateguns and all it does is detract from piracy. It seems to me that lowsec pirates have the right to complain to CCP, but you don't hear their complaints because most have adapted and gone elsewhere.

TL;DR: Piracy has always been exclusively player created and has received no love from CCP unlike every other aspect of the game.

As a rookie player I moved to low sec (south of Amarr) as soon as I got my first trasher to get some danger and adrenaline.
But to my suprise almost all systems are dead. I had an character before this one occupied with FW, and that character would get killed 4-10 a day, constantly chased, aggresed and poded all over the place. I easily lost 2-5 frigs and 1-2 destroyers a day (rookie here).

Now in my new low sec system I am mostly ratting and exploring, not a single time I have been locked, webbed or podded.
Most of the time I am totaly alone in a system and have 10-20 asteroid belts completely for myself. I am setting up some PI and mining soon, for me as a rookie this is a goldmine with no competition or threat what so ever.
Thought I guess my stategy makes me quite unique among new EVE players these day.
So I just wanted to confirm the posts above, cause that is what I also see in my empty empire.

This and other posts are just a variation of "if I shoot you in the foot, it will cure my crippled foot".

It does not work like that. Taking away options does not magically force anybody to leave it.

As I said in another thread, by making a third desert, you will not fill the low and null sec deserts. You will just get all deserts.

Take away the option to farm money to buy a PvP ship with relative safety (you know, people farm isk to MAKE that isk not to lose it plus some) and they you'll just achieve to even remove those few drakes that still came over there.

Simi, Good post.
It seems that CCP has a balance problem with the 'safety' of highsec / ISK earning. vs lowsec/ISK earning. It is too bad that CPP really has not added any tools for player created content in lowsec. The concept of social engineering to get people to move to lowsec is largely missed. It is needed. It seems that there is little incentive for competition of the lowsec resources.

Looks like there is one simple question: Are there any resources that are unique to lowsec that would make people want to go there and fight for that resource?

I'll state up front I'm not a pirate, in fact I prefer to fight against them. Not because I got ganked or think they are evil, it's just how I like to play games.

However I think i can weigh in on this subject as I have spent some time roaming around in low sec with friends and solo, done some exploration sites, and I want to see a both high and low sec be viable options for players to enjoy.

First, let me say a nerf to high sec would be bad. Most of the posts about high sec in this thread imply people play in high sec simply to farm ISK to then use elsewhere in the game. What these posts are overlooking is that people in high sec might actually enjoy the game play. I know I've had fun learning how to run lvl 4 missions with just my toons, I love incursions, and there are some days I just want to sit back and mine while I chat with friends. All of these activities I refuse to do in low sec because the risk is simply too high.

When I say risk I don't mean risk vs. reward and more ISK wouldn't prompt me into low sec to conduct those activities. I'm talking about the risk that if I stay long enough someone will find me and someone will bring a force strong enough to catch and kill me. I don't enjoy having to be aligned, constantly checking D scan, having to deploy scouts on gates to watch local, or wonder if a gate camp is getting setup on my route home. Those are risks I take when I want to be part of a PVP fleet and go looking for a fight. Most of the time I play the game to relax and you can't relax in low sec.

The problem with low sec is people want it to be like a higher paying high sec but without concordokken to interfere with fights. I've played other games where the PVP areas were just a lawless version of the PVE areas. In DAoC some of the best EXP in the game was found out in the PVP areas. There was always someone leveling up and there was nearly always someone out hunting the people leveling up. There are a few differences between those types of games and Eve though. The first is that when doing PVE you are wearing your PVP clothes and using your PVP skills. Switching from PVE to PVP was a simple matter of swapping targets. Another difference was the only thing lost for dieing to PVP was the time it took to run back to the area you were fighting, you didn't lose your armor and weapons every time someone killed you. So going into the PVP area was fun, exciting, and at the end of the day you could log off satisfied.

Eve though is a completely different monster. I don't go into low sec unless I'm willing to lose whatever I'm flying, to include my pod. What compulsion is there for me to go into low sec when I know I have a very good chance of coming back via a med bay in a new clone?

Higher isk payout? What good is making a lot more ISK when I'll just have to spend it to reship once whatever I'm flying is destroyed, and oh by the way there is no guarantee that I'll make enough to replace said loss. This applies to missions, sites, ratting, or any other form of combat ISK generation. Easiest way to get a kill is wait till the target is already engaged in a fight and use the extra DPS to make the kill happen even quicker.

Rare minerals? I have to risk even more for mining since I'll need to bring some way to move the ore, some kind of protection fleet to hopefully let the ore get out at least, and I can pretty much guarantee the mining ship will die considering they are tissue paper. Maybe the changes to mining ships will change that some, but the logistics required to have a profitable low sec mining fleet are fairly significant.

Moon minerals? Now there is something worth thinking about. The biggest problem to this idea is the ability for supers to enter low and skew the balance. In the end all of the profitable moons would be owned by null sec alliances capable of dropping a few dozen supers and a hundred or so caps onto anyone trying to attack the POS. Even if supers were excluded from low sec I just don't see how this would end up being a boon to pirates without some form of cyno jammer being installed in low sec. Even then the ability for null alliances to simply outnumber the smaller alliances probably won't help the pirate cause any.

I think the solution will be to completely reconsider how low sec is viewed. Instead of looking at mirroring high sec activities with a higher payout why not make low sec be the null training ground and combat centric area. Please note all yeilds on the below suggestions increase in return as system security decreases.

Maybe have .3-.4 systems be permanently cyno jammed making it impossible to bring in capitals.

Increase moon mining returns to something like 10-15% less then what is in Null.

Provide same types of asteroids as null but about 20% less density.

Restrict an alliance from having POS's in more than two low sec systems. They can have as many as they want in two systems, but this limit provides opportunity for smaller alliances and prevents huge swaths of low being taken over by Null blocs.

These changes make low sec more appealing as a manufacturing hub, provides some income to small alliances to help them get established, allows ISK for PVP ship purchase, provides a reason to fight for something inside of low sec, and keeps a steady stream of ships moving in and out of low sec.

Then to help encourage people that like to pirate to go to low sec why not make it so you can't gank in high sec. Which means all fighting will pretty much have to occur in low or null. This would help Eve to scale from high, low, and finally null for risk vs. reward. I'm fairly certain most players want to try out PVP in low and null but there's a fairly significant drop off to go from high sec alliance to moving to null.

I never declared that I grind ISK in high sec. I said I enjoy aspects of the game that are PVE such as missions, incursions, and mining. The ISK is something I want to have but I base my play on what I want to do, not how much ISK I can get out of it, otherwise I'd do market trading which is the safest method I know of to gain ISK, just not something I like doing.

From your previous responses I can only assume you are trying to say high sec ISK generation needs to be nerfed instead of making low sec somehow more appealing. Nerf high sec enough and I won't bother going into low sec at all. So you won't be forcing me to come to your playground, I'll either be happy making less and not getting it blown up or I'll just leave the game. Seems to me it's better when I do spend time in low sec then when I don't go there at all since the OP was about the fact low sec numbers have declined.

As for shiny ships in PVP, the most expensive thing I fly is a scimitar or basilisk. Well, sometimes my Falcon but I prefer a Blackbird while I'm still learning the in's and outs of ECM. Nothing shiny about anything I fly, but ships cost ISK and if I want to participate in PVP then I need to figure out some way to buy a ship or two I like flying.

I don't call getting a random drop from a site that can be run in a frigate an accomplishment. The moments I take pride in was putting some reps down on a bait BC on a roam and keeping him alive, jamming out an enemy Falcon and Gaurdian in a fleet fight, not losing anyone while a logi in an incursion, going into a WH solo and running a couple of sites. I don't care about what's in the cargo hold as much as I enjoy completing content I find challenging or working with my teammates on a roam.

Skill cap? Really? People that lose ships in low sec don't have skill and those that stay in low sec have the skill? Also, because I don't have skill I shouldn't be allowed to have access to high sec income? Um, so people that play the game automatically start either skilled or not and there's no way to get better. I shouldn't try to practice or learn? Where exactly should I get some income to replace ships while I get this mystical skill thing?


Do missions in an empty system. What happens when the system becomes not empty? I guess you just pack up and leave to find a new empty system. Because the people in the system wouldn't bother trying to follow you or hunt you in other systems?

In exploration sites when someone does show up on d-scan the only option is to run, leaving the site unfinished and any time spent finding it wasted?

Somehow it sounds like you are saying when you go to low sec you better do everything you can to avoid someone else otherwise you are gonna die. So um... why should I go into low sec for anything except looking to pick a fight?

Finally, I'm rather confused by your last statement. The OP wants to know if the population of low sec is declining and then you say that coming out on the weekends for a fight is somehow bad for the people living in low sec?

The only thing I can figure is you want easy targets to flock to low sec to line up for pirates to kill, or alternately you want anyone who wants to PVP to only live in low sec and never lose a ship. I'm not really sure what your point is to be honest.

FARKING FORUM AT MY POIST

Meh, the gist of it was the Ruareve and Vaerah are right about this. There's a certain proportion of players who will never be tempted out of high sec, and will simply leave if things change too much. But there are some players (like me) who are temptable. (I have spent quite some time in low-sec, but only for the excitement, because the reward just isn't worth the risk ultimately.)

What would tempt me would be PvP-like PvE content that required PvP fitting and formed a kind of "training wheels" aspect for PvP with people.

You cannot expect PvE-centric players to venture into PvP areas with fits that are unsuitable for PvP. Make the PvE content require PvP fits, and then there would be a chance to learn.

See, the problem is, I think, that there are players who are "on the fence" with PvP. I am fairly combative in the sense that I won't back down from a fight if it occurs, but I would NEVER INITIATE AGGRESSION. It's just not me (nor is it Barb).

Which blocks me from learning PvP in a "traditional" way (by simply going out there in cheap ships and starting fights).

For such players as me, what would be attractive would be something that invited me to areas where PvP was possible, but where I'd stand a fighting chance of learning as a non-aggressor (as a defender), by being able to fly PvP fits to do my PvE content.

One thing, for a start, would be to have such missions have only one or two enemy NPCs, whose AI is more player-like (granted that's never going to be fully possible, but at least something that could be like "training wheels", so one could practice some PvP basics). For example, what about having to point a "courier" to prevent him from taking something out of system, then having a PvP-ish fight with that courier. The "courier" AI could be aware of your ship's capabilties in that he could stay just ahead of your point range so you would have to overheat the point to get him. Stuff like that - missions that required overheat in terms of DPS for a single NPC, fights that had big spike DPS that required buffer fits, etc., etc.

"I never declared that I grind ISK in high sec", followed by yet another paragraph implying that you grind ISK in high sec. Interesting choice of follow ups. And to be honest your coming into low sec to artificially try and force PvP on the native has no real impact on piracy.

When was the last time you got in a fleet fight with one of your Fendahlian collective kitchen sink fleets and your fleet got held ransom? Or when was the last time you tried to "control" a system for profit, to allow your members to mission/mine/plex as they wish?

But either way it isn't particularly important as to whether or not you personally would come to low sec, just giving the low sec pirates who already live in low sec a reason to PvE in their own back yard would be enough. As it stands most of them don't bother since they can just grind in high sec with alts, or do it with their mains with the added benefit of grinding back sec status as they go.


That's kind of the point, most ships these days are extremely cheap. A scimitar, basi or falcon is a T2 cruiser hull yet it can be replaced with a few hours work in high sec.

No matter how much you buff low sec income, when the common PvP ships can be replaced with a few hours of high sec grinding people will never choose to PvE in low sec in any great numbers. It simply gives you no meaningful competitive edge.


If you are running sites that can be run in a frigate, we are talking about different kinds of PvE.

And at no point did I claim that just because you lack skill you should be denied high sec income, just that there should be a notable difference between high sec income and low sec income. I also didn't claim high sec income should be cut off entirely to the extent that you cannot replace ships, just that it should be nerfed to the point where you cannot grind out another drake in 60 minutes.



No, the only option for you is to run. When someone finds me in a site I swap T3s (but keep the name the same, so on directional it looks like I'm still in my PvE T3 surrounded by wrecks), then I go back and sit in the first room and kill them when they come in after me. People very quickly learn not to bother trying to kill you.

And no, when someone jumps into system and you're missioning you don't "have" to leave, you can finish the site or just completely ignore them unless they try finding you. If they try finding you your response should again depend on personal resources, who you're up against and what they're flying.

I have a feeling this reply is going to be fairly useless and fall on deaf ears, but I'll try. I'm just going to summarize some of Simi's responses as I prefer not to engage in quote wars. Especially when the person conveniently omits all of the suggestions I made for improving low sec and thus improving the number of opportunities for pirates.

Anyway.

I think the first communication barrier is how a pirate is defined. I don't consider someone living in low sec and doing missions, mining, or whatever other kind of PVE is out there as a pirate. To me a pirate is someone who is below -5 security status from engaging other people. Don't have to live in low to be a pirate, it's just easier. Piracy is not where you live, it's the actions you take. From your responses Simi it seems you consider anyone living in low sec to be a pirate. So please consider my definition when you reply.

Now as for PVE ISK generation in low sec, it is definitely higher then a similar activity in high sec. Lvl 4's, complexes, exploration sites, ratting, and PI all have much better returns in low sec if you compare the activity itself. Where high sec closes the gap is in the ability to complete the PVE activities without someone trying to hunt you down. Then again I thought the point of being in low sec was to have freedom to fight other people without concord interfering. Not for the PVE, which is done when there are no targets, but for the PVP.

Buffing the returns on PVE won't change the reputation or reality of low sec, but changing the fundamental way low sec works will give the opportunity for people to actually hang around and have a chance of winning a fight and holding some territory.

I'm not going to argue in regards to your feelings on a high sec income nerf. You seem convinced the only way to get people to live in null is make high sec so boring and dull the players will flock to a high income low sec utopia. I believe that should you nerf high sec income so much people feel forced to go to low or endure some crazy grind the majority will just leave the game. In the end low will have even fewer people reducing the opportunities to conduct piratey activity. Pretty sure we are just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one.

My point about departing a PVE mission when someone comes looking is valid. You agreed you'd have to leave, reship, and come back. That ends the PVE mission and slows down the income you can make. Had you not been interrupted you would have made more on that mission than someone else doing the same mission in high sec. The problem with low sec though is you will almost always be interrupted as pointed out earlier in this post.



Buffing the income of low sec won't rejuvenate the pirating industry. Make the income high enough and you'll just attract null alliances to come in with caps and super caps to make easy income. Pirates rely on a steady population moving around in order to conduct raids and PVP on others. The only way to have that population is make low sec attractive to players in high sec and the only way to do that is to provide an opportunity to learn PVP without also allowing much larger groups to come in and roflstomp with supers and caps.

I imagine the typical scenario has gone something like this. Small alliance wants to move from high to low to learn how to PVP. They find a quiet corner, setup a POS or two and start manufacturing caps. They get a modest fleet built up and decide to expand a little bit since their fortunes seem to be doing pretty good. They attack a POS and get jumped by a fleet of Supers someone batphoned in. In retaliation the small alliance's POS are attacked and they are driven back into high sec where they belong.

The small alliance offered pirates a few targets here and there and depending on the size of the fleets involved there could have been some good back and forth fights as the alliance learned the in's and out's of PVP. However because low sec is nearly all or nothing it's very difficult for a small group to move in and establish a presence.

Think of it like pirates in the Caribbean area back in the 16-1700's. Before settlers moved in and required merchants to ship goods around there was no real pirating. As more people moved into the area there was need for increased shipping and this lead to some crews to the realization they could make more money attacking merchant ships than they could by living a peaceful life. If the pirates got too strong shipping stopped going in the area. The pull of the new world wasn't higher income when compared to the European continent. The reason people colonized was for the chance to own land, to be their own person, to provide their children with a better life. The only people seeing increased income were the countries receiving the gold/silver/goods. Land and the chance to have a new life were the motivating factor, not the idea of increasing profits by 30%.

Low sec is the same way. People aren't going to colonize low sec because it has a 30% greater income potential than high sec. They are going to live in low sec because they want the chance to try and get some territory for their alliance to grow, to use capital ships, to get a feel for PVP, and try to create sufficient infrastructure to maybe make a move into null sec at some point.

Few people will just jump into the deep end of a pool to learn how to swim. Instead they start shallow and practice the moves before going into deeper water. Eve expects people to go from hanging out at the hot tub then jumping straight into 20ft of water with almost nothing in between. It's a flawed system and the reason why low sec is under populated. Without a sufficient population to prey upon the number of pirates is also going to decline.