Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I am hearing a lot of calls for change, but not anything that would be balanced.

I am hearing calls for make my playstyle more fun, at someone else's expense.

It doesn't work that way. You must also give something back, so it can be in balance.

High sec is supposed to be as safe as it is. Heck, at no point should null or low sec ever BE safer, despite the fact that situations arise to occasionally prove otherwise.
Go ahead, try to gank someone in low or null. You may not lose your ship to concord, but good luck even seeing their's!
They know the moment you are in system, and have gotten safe by the time you finished loading grid at the gate.

At least high sec pilots know and accept they cannot avoid hostiles unless they have seen them before, and can set standings to warn themselves next time. That first suicide gank attempt embodies the surprise and stealth a cloaked pilot could only dream of. After that, they are watching for you.

Rewards in low and null reflect this. Heck, SOV null often makes high sec look like a bad neighborhood by comparison. That the rewards are at all better in null is a testament to CCP acknowledging the effort made to create this safety.

If you want change, it has to flow from the very base reasons we have things the way they are.
The player base will simply work around your idea otherwise.

Ok, I'll bite.

There were 331 ship kills in Jita, 173 in Amarr, 17 in Hageken, 15 in Tsuguwa, 38 in Aufay, 26 in Chiga, 7 in Isinokka and so on. Of course, those systems (especially the first two) also see a lot more players passing through than your average low / null sec system, however high sec still generates just as much pvp. The only difference is that the attacker has to consider a price to do so, whether it be a war declaration or the cost of a gank and its potential failure.

Btw., if you think your Skiff is safe, you're gravely mistaken. It's only a question of whether the ganker wants to spend money to kill you. So it'll take four Tornados? Big deal, if they want to get you on the killmail, they'll do so. Or ten if needed. Sometimes, the pure joy of pissing someone off is worth the money invested :)

1337 pvpers seeking riskelss pvp by going after ships that don't have points are... like locusts. Lowsec is now barren due to the consequences of their actions, time to move on.

The proposal is not to eliminate high sec. The proposal is to make it much more profitable to operate in low sec (even taking int account the need to run from pvpers, etc.).

If that isn't fun for you, then you would not be obligated to do it. You could continue operating in high sec where you don't have to worry about such things. However, you would make much less money than those who WOULD be willing to do it.

That should be what your choice is: Wealth or convenience?




No. You're only obligated to "give something back" if the game is currently balanced.

But the game is not currently balanced. It is greatly imbalanced, with the greatest rewards being available in the location with the lowest risk. Therefore the only change that has to be made is in the direction of balancing it, with nothing on the other side.

Imagine a see-saw with a big fat kid on one side, and a skinny runt on the other. The way to balance that see-saw would be to add kids to the skinny side. NOTHING would need to be added to the side with the fat kid, in order to balance the see-saw, because it started out imbalanced.



You seem to be definining "balanced" as "equal to whatever the game is right now." That is not what it means. It means "All various playstyles ideally are about equally profitable for an equally skilled player." Which is not true right now.

It is possible to increase the rewards of low and null sec mining while simultaneously punishing people for using "run away at the first sign of trouble" strategies. There are many ways to do this. Off the top of my head:

1) Nerf or remove local chat, and then up the value of minerals in low and null dramatically. This would discourage people from using the run away strategy, and instead encourage large scale fleets with multiple miners, orcas, armed escorts, etc.

2) Alternatively, you could make it so that belt rats scale their difficulty based on the amount of mining activity recently. When a lot of ore per second is being mined, the rats become exponentially meaner (only in low/null, not in high sec), which makes it virtually impossible to use a "run away at the first sign of trouble" strategy, because trouble will always instantly and automatically find you whenever you are mining a lot. You would be forced to use things like escorts, etc. Then, up the value of low and null minerals a lot to make such escorts and teamwork worthwhile and more profitable than high sec.

3) Alternatively, you could discourage AFK mining in general, and not change anything else. For instance, by making asteroid belts move (as if in orbit) faster than most mining ships could follow them, requiring you to actively get new targets, or having little "minigame" types of semi-intelligent things you have to do to "fine-tune your lasers" etc. for max yield. This would make AFK mining no logner profitable, and thus eliminate the major attraction of high-sec. If you have to be at your keyboard ANYWAY, then you might as well go mine in low sec, where you get more money

Think outside the box a little

Not necessarily. The grass could also just be made greener in low-sec.
OR some combination of the two.
OR some game mechanic that changes the way pirates interact with their victims


There are a bunch of ways to do it. The relationship between high and low matter more than the absolute numbers involved in any one place.

Whatever way is found, assuming one is, will be independant of the profits to be made.

The risk of Hi Sec is manageable by flying smart and keeping your cool when the pirates come baiting you, and you can raise the pirates barrier of entry by putting more buffer on your ship and ensuring they have to bring more to kill you before CONCORD gets them if they want to just gank. In either case, you have an active way to control the level of risk you take by your own action, with only a few missions affording pirates the ability to deny you your mission completion with no way for you to prevent it.

The risk of Low Sec is not manageable at all, except for docking up and waiting them out, or bringing 2-5 pvp combat escorts with me, making the profit of the trip a wash. There is no barrier to their entry to the feild. They can use tools like Dscan and Probes in an intellegent way, I"m forced to stare at DScan every few seconds to remain 'vigilant' at all times, or just dock if someone I don't personally know enters the system.

There is no way to balance the rewards without either making Hi Sec worth pennies a day, or Low Sec Worth millions a second because the Risk is that far askew. Find a way to change the risk factor, and something might be possible.

Miners who aren't already using chat's pilot roster to avoid PvP, are often not in a place where it is a risk.

I want mining to be interactive, challenging, and for miners to NOT need to run like their lives depend on it.
(Exhumer's greatest boast is that the Skiff takes longer to kill. At what point this becomes a threat to PvP pilots, I can't say)

Giving miners a way to PvP while mining is an ideal, but mining barges are not combat worthy beyond token examples which are not functional as mining vessels. Yes, they can carry a flight of drones that could handle weaker rats, but not a PvP pilot seriously prepared.

Obviously there is no balance between PvP and mining ships. That would be like saying there is a balance between wolves and sheep.
Mining ships survive by either running, or possibly by having PvP pilots somehow defend them.
(This assumes readily available defenders, as well as attackers who don't go in for the exhumer kill mail while tanking said defender)

How do we resolve this?

Honestly I find threads suggesting nerfing high sec to be short sighted.

They seem to assume that something present in high sec is convincing players to stick to high sec.

In a way, they are correct. But the solution is to bring it, or a comparable variation on it to the other areas, not remove it!

If you like low stress play, where your PvP is limited to being alert while hauling and chatting with your buddies, you are not going to be too happy if the medium that permitted this is nerfed to be unplayable to you.

You might even take a break from playing, till they got their heads back on straight at CCP.
Let's hope they don't do anything like that!

You have a couple of fundamental flaws in your thinking.

First, of all the bearish things to do, mining is the least affected by piracy. Pirates come in, you dock up. Profit lost, but you begin again as soon as they are gone at no further penalty. Missioning is a whole different deal---you are under fire, with things to watch other than Dscan. Pirates come in, you dock up. Sometimes you lose mission objectives, standings, and ultimately your ability to do missoins for that agent. Not common, but it can happen. Other activities have similar problems, but with mining the minerals will always be there, waiting.

Second, that it would be OK to only be able to get pennies a day from Hi Sec. New players would never be able to afford new ships or modules. Regardless of buff low or reduce high, the market would stabilize at this new reality. Given enough insanity, faction ships would become cheaper unless the LP store prices changed.

The issue is the sudden massive spike in risk due to the toxic playstyle of the pirates. If EVE has a flaw, it is that the enjoyment of one group comes at the expense of another. This is supposed to encourage conflict, but game design does not support the prey being able to fight back effectively while also accomplishing PvE goals.

Piracy as practiced in Lo Sec is cheaper, easier, faster, and less risky than trying to mission in Lo Sec. The balance in almost any engagement is far askew in the pirates favor---partially because of the inherant benefits of having the initiative, partially because of the difference in fits between PVE and PVP ships. This is the aspect that needs to change to get targets under your guns. Pirates need to accept that riskless ganking is unhealthy for the game and start looking for compromise and suggestions on how to empower bears to fight back while still allowing them to be bears. You want a bear to stay under your guns so you can kill him? Give him a chance to win