EVE Information Portal

First, a congratulations are in order for taking the time to actually address the absurd complexity of the aggression system in Eve and iron out some of the wrinkles. Granted, I myself and other like me have based a solid chunk of their entire play-style on exploiting peoples inability or refusal to understand the rules, but I can at least accept that its a messy situation that needed looking at.

That said however, I've got some major concerns about where this takes us. I understand that Eve needs to be, at a ground level, more accessible to a new player. Retention after all, means this game continues to grow and thrive. What worries me though is that the path we seem to be on now equates "accessibility" with "easiness". Historically (and I know its been said a million times), "Eve is hard", and that's actually been its draw to most people who play it. Now, that mentality might be changing as CCP ramps up for the big leagues with the DUST release, but its definitely what drew most of us to this game in the first place; lets now forget that. Eve is a harsh, cruel learning curve, and everyone really is out to get you. There are no "pvp shards" or do-overs, and when you lose your stuff, that stuff is gone, not back in your castle/dungeon/magic toadstool manor.

So why dumb it down? Sure, people should be aware of the consequences of their actions, but that's called "learning the rules", and it does not and should not involve a giant neon blinker in your face yelling "WARNING YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING DUMB". Eve has always been about trial and error, and learning from your mistakes. This just seems like we're diluting it down to make room for some squishy new players. What ever happened to HTFU?

Conversely, the new Crimewatch 2.0 in some ways actually makes being a fresh new player even harder. Lets look at can-flipping, which has been pretty much every budding PvPers first foray into fighting other players. In the past, feisty new guy steals from a can and either A.) kills the common-sense-deprived retriever that actually shoots back or B.) retriever runs off and comes back in a PvP ship to stomp on him. Anybody with an IQ north of 70 would typically go with B and either go get a PvP ship or more commonly, request help from another corpmate nearby. Whatever the outcome though, our feisty new guy learned a lot about fighting a real person, got his adrenaline pumping, and went out looking for more.

That, it seems, all goes out the window with CW2, because now when you steal from a can that isn't yours, everybody pretty much anywhere can now shoot at you. In our brave new world, when our new guy grabs a can, he no longer gets a 1v1 and a valuable lesson, he gets a 1v30 and says "**** this". The lesson learned here now is that large blob mentality wins, and he should probably go off and join one of the biggest null alliances in the game and join rank with thousands of others who now realize that doing anything without at least a fleet behind them is a waste of their time and ship. So much for encouraging solo and small gang work.

There are other points of the new Crimewatch that I think are a great addition to the game; the new logging off mechanics for instance, or killrights for even an attempted gank (and I say that as a suicider). But again, I hope CCP keeps in mind that we love this sandbox because it is what we make it, not because it came with pre-made sandcastles and someone to hold our hand as we play in it.

Having a World of Warcraft /duel feature is not the answer.

Holding the duel in a remote area, perhaps even in a safespot, makes far more sense in a sandbox game where you take control over existing mechanics.

Yes, this part will be generally unchanged.

Make a turnement at a remote place somewhere. Does not matter if it's high/low or 0.0 sec. There are sooooo many empty systems. Be creativ.

(And do it on a savespot.)

@June Ting
You have 15 Minutes to scan the carrier down and agress him agian. That should restart the countdown as far as i understould it.
Please correct me if i am wrong.

Tippia always comes up with flippiant answers that have very little basis in reality.
This 15 minute NPC timer means death for any ratter who has an internet outage.

in before the circlejerk... maybe not

So you're killing off ninja salvaging and can flipping as a professions how is that not dumbing things down?

I'll leave prognistications on the general merits to others who have far more experience with it (anyone who knows me knows that I'm a carebear at heart). However, I'm in help chat enough to know that there's no particularly easy to mutually agree to a 1v1 or some such in high sec (dropping one piece of ammo and stealing from each other seems to be going by the wayside under the proposed changes). Are there any plans to implement an ability for pilots (either 1v1 or in larger numbers) to duel without invoking the broader criminal flags and/or CONCORD in high sec (or, to a lesser extent, low sec/null sec)? Did I miss something in the dev blog?

EDIT: Ha, just saw this "We're also working on a replacement for the usage of loot-theft as a way to initiate consensual 1v1s without incurring criminal penalties that we hope to release for Winter" SO NEVER MIND. I would still like to see a definitive plan for this before launch, however.

Might have been asked already, but if I have an NPC flag, activate a cloak module, and then log off, will the cloak remain active until the ship disappears the same way it does now?

Apart from the assistance bit, you've correct.

Does this mean that kill rights for ship (not pod) destroyed in lowsec without aggressing back to the attacker have gone, or is that still in the new system?[/quote]
Ship-ship aggression in low-sec will no longer generate a kill right. Super Friends have a blog coming along that goes in to this in more details about how this will work.

Not asking for anything we don't have already.