EVE General Discussion

And my post wasn't about any more than the article in the OP. It's not your game, it's CCPs. Judging by some of the posts that 'your side' makes though it's not hard to be against you. EVE was not created to be a niche game. No matter how any of you feel about it. CCP made it to be a successful space MMO, with plans to grow to be THE space MMO. That is what got me into EVE. Space battles, planet battles, walking around huge space stations....

The potential is there, and it is emerging. With a little more work and a few technological advancements coupled with no other real space game being on the market CCP is achieving their stated goal. If they have to rip out a few weeds to let the garden of New Eden flourish, then so be it.

You know I don't actually believe that. I do believe that people that write any kind of opinion article and get involved in the community on that level have agendas, don't get me wrong, but I don't believe the Agenda is some sort of conspiracy that we can't figuire out nore do I believe even guys like Mittani and his various article writers are conspiring together to destroy Eve for everyone else. We all have our own vision of the game and I doubt we will ever have a consensus, but their vision, of a more dangerous and more cut throat Eve is no more or less valid than the "safer" or "safe" version of Eve others advocate.

I have always felt that any mechanic that says "no you can't do that" is in oppossition to the original vision of Eve that CCP presented to us. In a sense the games mechanic should always say "yes you can"... BUT "here are you consquences". More importantly I believe the "consequence" part of the mechanic should be a fully functioning system driven by players reactions and not some automated system. This is really where I have a beef with ganking mechanics as they are today.

Sure there are consequences to gankers. There ship is blown up, they lose sec rating which takes considerable time to rebuild, their is no insurance payout so your gank may conceivably come at a loss if planned poorly, their is a 15 minute timer that prevents you from doing jack **** but wait. Those are all consequences, but none of them are run by the player base. A person who was a victim of a gank wasn't the instrument of those consequences, unlike what happen to him, AKA, his consquence for flying a mining ship in the wrong place with the wrong fit is that another player blew him up.

To me this is the lob sided aspect of the system. I don't care about insurance, sec rating, timers or their ISK loses, I as a player want to be able to say "ok buddy, you ganked me, now I'm going to give you some consequences and we are going to do it my way". As it is today, a person who wants to get back at a ganker in particularly a smart one has absolutely no recourse.

1. War dec? Nope, he's in a NPC corp.
2. Suicide gank him back? Unlikely, after all, he's a PvPer not a miner, try suicide ganking a bloody Drake in High Sec
3. Bounty collection? Would be nice, but if I put a bounty on him, he'll have his buddy blow him up and laugh all the way to the bank.
4. Try to find him and stop him from suicide ganking? Whats the point, He'll get Concorded after the attempt and you can't shoot at him before.

My point is that suicide ganking as a tactic and as a "thing" you can do in the game is fine but from my perspective, if there is no good way for me to serve up some consequences to a suicide ganker its worthless.

The worst part about it is that there are lots of ways with minimal though to fix this.

Just one example.

1. Make bounties collectable only by the people the person the bounty placer specificies.
2. Allow people who are able to collect a bounty to attack that individual person anywhere, anytime.
3. Allow the pirate (the holder of the bounty) to pay off his own bounty, retributions go to the person who placed the bounty.
4. Only allow a bounty to be placed after you have been blown up in Low or High Sec.

The real question is, is it worth it?..

Honestly, it's not miner bashing that is the problem, but the perspective of facing hisec of the future we have no idea about, we have no idea wheter it's really all about "nerfing hisec aggression" or something more.

Though as I've said in comments there, known plans of WoD pretty much outline what CCP are aiming for for both games - total separation of "sandbox" and "PvE" parts of the game. Of course, concept can be a subject to changes, so who knows...

Anyways, I hope CCP guys understand that if they want to get away with this sort of model, they have to learn how to make PvE content that worth more that just income of money/items. That is, you know, fun to play. That won't make you regret that you did this PvE stuff instead of something that offer better ISK/hour.

And finally, I'm really waiting for author of that article to write down what he knows of possible negative effects of such changes that can affect negatively those who will choose to deal with the problem by leaving hisec for good.

Once again everybody's missing the point.
The miner's could have easily made lives difficult for the gankers, but they refused to do so and instead had CCP do it for them.
Now they're chestbeating triumphantly exclaiming that gankers should adapt or die, htfu, or whatever else they like.
Isn't revenge a dish best served... yourself? You had to go and get someone else to do it for you. That's just sad.

The real issue is that miners refuse to sacrifice yield for tank. They just want to be buffed magically and that's what they got. Boy I wish pvp ships didn't have to choose between gank and tank, we should just have both magically.

I think as the article point out, regardless of what CCP says, the patch goals in the last several months and future patch development plans like Crimewatch are going to have the effect of making High Sec safer.

It just begs the question, is that a good idea?

Suffice to say the community is definitely not at a consensus, but if you filter out the extreme right and the extreme left, for the lack of a better term, the moderate opinion seems to be that it is a good idea, a category I find myself part of.

My two major points of contention are the Risk Vs. Rewards Vs. Consequences, which I believe should be dictated by players, not by an automated system. I want to as a player be both the Risk, The Reward and the Consequence of another players action. I don't need Concord to manage that for me. This is really where I think the mechanics as they are today still need some work.

The hate thats spewed about carebears is generally mostly a macho man attitude that says "hey look at me, I can blow up your ship, that makes me better than you"... This attitude doesn't come from real Eve players, it comes from jack asses that exist in this and every other game and/or public forum. It boils down to little weener syndrome, you can bet its the same guys who buy monster sized SUV's and refer to their girlfriend as "my *****". So don't mix up the real Eve community with the A-holes that dwell within its ranks.

What real Eve players don't want is for Eve to be converted to a carebear, theme park game and the reason should be obvious, we love the game because of how it is and we play it because it is specifically not a theme park MMO and notably its the only one of its kind, so we have no other recourse.

That said I do agree with you, part of the reason "carebearing" gets .....thrown under the bus is because the players who are out in null, low and wormhole space swapping paint everyday live in a High Risk and relatively low reward world, while carebears live in a low risk and high reward world. To this kind of player the **** is upside and I tend to agree with them.

So yeah, I don't mind a safe high sec with carebears floating around doing their mining and manufacturing and participating in the game as little worker bee's but I don't want that to be the most profitable way to play the game, I want to know that when me and my crew go out and risk billions of ISK worth of ships in some null sec hell hole somewhere, that if we are successful we are showered with riches given the risks we take. That simply isn't the case its very much upside down even if you are amazingly good at this game.

I personally thing that all PvE content should be relatively low pay, even null sec ratting, complexes, incursions.. everything. The best rewards should come from popping another player trying to pop you.

Good article, good read. Once again James delivers.

I would say this, highsec is being made safer. That is beyond any doubt, anyone who denies this is denying the truth, either to themselves or to everyone, not that the opinions of such fools really matter.
Given that and the fact that EvE is supposed to be based around a risk/reward system then as long as they nerf the ever living **** out of the rewards I have no issue with that.
So cut the possible income of mining, missioning, ratting etc etc in highsec in accordance with the reduced risk.
Seems fair to me.

I am in complete and utter agreement. And believe me, I've seen MMOs I've loved turned into something it wasn't because the marketing team got involved with the design.

Yes, lets cripple the economy while we are at it. Or are those ship just going to magically build and fit themselves? You don't get rich grinding. It just doesn't happen. Rich happens when the greater output exceeds greater input, and grinding is linear, you get exactly the same ratio for X effort, as you do 10X effort.

Or are you just mad that roaming around for hours contributing nothing to the game but a target is actually adding more value to the economy than someone grinding that whole time.

Do you want rifters to cost 250mil?