Crime & Punishment

Earlier in this thread Angry23 made an offer to CCP Greyscale which I think has merit. Before you try to change somthing experience it. So I will second the offer and extend it.

Greyscale join our camps for a few days and I will even give you a standard camping BC to use.

Then think about what you are going to do.

Dear CCP,

Lowsec is broken, and should be fixed. There is a real problem with lowsec- there's no reason to go there. At all. even though faction warfare brings smallish gang pvp to lowsec, it doesn't bring a reason for people to actually live there.

I don't care what you do, but instead of decreasing the risk of lowsec (which is frankly so laughably low I fly merrily in anything smaller than a battleship without scouts, or support constantly through the longest lowsec pipes in EVE) why don't you try increasing the rewards of lowsec, by offering more awesome exploration content, better ores, and more natural resources which are in high demand. Why not lower taxes and fees (don't governments subsidize and support people settling unclaimed territory? Kind of like western expansion). Lowsec gates aren't broken. Lowsec stations aren't broken. Lowsec capital warfare isn't broken. Lowsec's ONLY MAJOR FLAW is that there is no reason to go there, or go through there. Piracy is broken because there are no soft targets operating there, because there's no REASON TO AT ALL

Lets try something radical, like removing ice from highsec and putting it into lowsec/nullsec/w-space, or drastically improving the ore returns, or improving the rats (higher rate of spawn to faction rats maybe?) or place better moons there. ANYTHING BUT THIS because this is a formula to destroy lowsec, and turn it into a wasteland.

They won't, because the rewards are still **** compared to highsec. The only way to increase lowsec activity is to increase the rewards -- make mission/mining/etc. pay double in lowsec and remove level 4s from highsec.

Low-sec could use more things to do in it, which require you to be out there in some real ship (not a gunless rifter) and do something - and something fun. You know, actual content. However, that's secondary.

Currently, there's a reasonable amount of money-making activities, mainly FW which presents colossal money-making doable on an alt with virtually zero risk (because the risk of losing a gunless Rifter in contrast to the rewards is virtually zero) already. A good part of these however don't require you to be out in space doing anything (PI, POS management).

As for safety, the obvious shortcuts between highsec market hubs are often going to get camped. I don't find that to be a problem though, except for the people who still haven't learned to avoid Rancer (even if they asked about it in newbie corp chat some old alt would probably explain to them to stay the hell away from there) and such places. Other than those, it's reasonably - although not completely - safe to pass through.

One of the reasons for this is that small ships without quite a bit of organization and numbers cannot be safely used at gates to tackle. That is a good thing, despite the 0.0 PVPers disliking it or finding it unnatural - it makes low-sec a whole lot more passable, since you have chances to get away from non-serious camps.

There's nothing which is solved by making gate guns stronger, there's a lot to be broken by allowing small ships not to be blown up right away (it becomes less safe for solo people passing through), and ramping up gate guns to the point a carrier is blown up in four minutes breaks the option of having actual fights - not ganks, but fights - at gates.

It also practically removes the ability to catch some ship at a gate with only a few ships and blow it up (on the other hand, large camps which sit at a pounce spot and can damn-near instapop a ship are not affected). So in comparison it becomes even better to camp in larger gangs then to roam in small ones (which doesn't sound like something anyone would wish to achieve).

Automatically shooting criminals is even worse - it makes it far far more dangerous to roam solo or even in small gang through lowsec for outlaws, which is already significantly more dangerous to do (for outlaws) since they can be locked down by small / squishy ships. I don't know what would anyone hope to achieve with that, except reduce the number of outlaws (by making it flat out harder for them to play the game).

Before making any changes, the designers have to answer the basic question of design, which is "what do you want to achieve"? I don't see anyone, yet, saying what they want out of low-sec changes.

If the idea is to get more players to lowsec, then they must have a reason to want to go to lowsec. The one and only reason I can think of for going to the current lowsec is wanting to shoot people (and farm FW with an alt).

I mean, outside of shooting people without the hassle which is living in 0.0, what content (as in, things to actually DO in space with a ship) does low-sec actually have which is not available in other places? Why would people don't want PVP live in low-sec? Money? There's (better) money elsewhere. For the people who are playing this to relax and do some missions in their faction pinata and chat, they want the hassle-free gameplay of highsec and don't care if this or that gives you 50% more ISK. Which is fine, if it is entertaining for some people to play like that, let them play.

New players which go to low-sec also go to low-sec because they want to fight or because they want the excitement of a possible fight. I would bet that their disappointment may have much more to do with the difficulties of finding a decent fight then camps. It takes hours of roaming to find a target, sometimes, and you're unlikely to find much without a covops alt. Ramping up gateguns just makes it more or less impossible to fight at the one spot you are likely to find people; passing through gates.

Now, if Greyscale would want new people to go to lowsec and live in lowsec which aren't there to actually fight all the time, then there should be some actual playable content in lowsec which is interesting, fun and reasonably profitable and revolves around actually doing something with a ship in space. You know, something which makes people do more in low-sec then just pass through gates.

This is the key sentence in this whole thread
Before making any changes, the designers have to answer the basic question of design, which is "what do you want to achieve"? I don't see anyone, yet, saying what they want out of low-sec changes.

• It seems CCP and especially Greyscale want to stop a rare fringe case, capitals camping lowsec gates, see PL/Amamake. I have no idea how to accomplish that but scaling Sentry DPS is definitly the wrong way.
• What do you not want at all is Frigs/Inties being able to tackle at the gate (like in 0.0). It is that simple. Allowing Frigs/Inties to tackle at gates will disrupt any traffic at all and it will be gatecampers heaven leading to a gigantic Carebear rage after.
• What do you not want at all is stopping fights of any sort at gates, including the use of capitals.

Wow just wow this gate gun change has gota be one of the worst ideas iv seen in eve

This will not stop camping inty with snipers/ cloaked pests / of grid warp ins to name but a few ways around such a change

why stop lo-sec gate camping so i can camp 0.0 with bubbles and hics but god forbid i sit in a lo-sec camp chilling with my m8s aving few beers

if someone wants to put a cap on a gate well why the hell not? sandbox anyone?

The only thing this will do is kill small scale pvp at gates/stations and thats were 95% of engagements happen

why not try fixing somthing thats actualy bust like the bounty system like make buying and selling kill rights that would create the bounty hunter eve life style as in actualy add content

Gate guns are fine as they are tbh try fighting someone with extra 300 gate gun dps on u and you cant use drones as they get insta poped

You are under the false assumption that Low Sec fighting is about gate camps or that most of us gatecamp. The problems with the change to gate gun mechanics are that people who live and fight in low sec in fleets will have many of the areas that they fight removed from them. To top it off, our use of capital ships will also become limited.

It takes a lot longer then 5 minutes to kill a capital ship with the average size low sec gang. A lot goes into our capital kills.

Fighting is not about some type of prearranged 'lets meet at planet one and drop capital ships'.

The assumption that we do not currently hunt people down and kill them is also incorrect.

However, we do fight on gates a lot. We fight on stations. Killing someone playing station games is rather satisfying. The people who camp gates have developed amazing GTFO abilities when a fleet comes into their system. But, because of a handful (two) regularly camped systems there is some ridiculous idea that every single gate is camped and that is the only way PvP happens on low sec.

A gank is fast. Those people are still going to die on gates and at stations because they will still be ignorant about how to live and move in low sec.

The ones affected are those having fleet fights. We don't care that a Velator has jumped through. I'm sorry if it is scary that we are sitting on a gate but we are waiting for a warp in for something to kill. Many roams are not interested in wasting valuable time waiting out GCC timers for killing an ibis. Of course we are going to kill a hauler. Killing things is what we do.

Alright then lots to cover here so...

1. This proposal WILL NOT lead to more targets to hunt, just because someone can get through a gate doesn't mean they then stick around the only way to make people come into low sec to stick around is content in a risk vs reward situation.

2. We do not have Sov structures so almost all fleet combat is on a gate or a station, these changes will be impacting that hence he rage from mos of us.

3. You like a lot of "leet" null sec types don't realise just how much null sec experience is present in low sec pvp corps, they tend to have a large proportion of players who got bored of null sec politics, carebear filled PVP corps and POS/Sov combat. (even a real shocker here The United.). This is more the reason Low Sec is a wasteland that the PVP population per head is higher and more effective, many low sec corps have the ability to make a big impact in null but would lose their membership overnight if they even thought about it... been there, done that, got the T-shirt, had to give the T-shirt back cos the blues said we shouldn't wear them.

4. We already have cloaky haulers, the MWD + cloak trick and scouts which will actually allow a competent pilot to escape most situations on a gate.

Back to main point...

CCP this change would devastate PVP in low sec by all means regenerate low sec but do it through CONTENT not nerfs.