Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Another nerf highsec thread.

Question: If people stay in highsec because the rewards are so awesome, why aren't they in lowsec where the rewards are quite a lot greater?

Oh thats right, cause you kill them at the gate and make sure they can't do whatever they were trying.

Nerfing highsec operates on the assumption that players will chase rewards, so if we put more rewards, they will go there to get them. This has been proven false repeatedly. Players will go to the area that enables their favorite activity. If that's pvp, it means lowsec, FW, etc. If it's playing the massive reward, massive risk game, it's wormholes. If it's casually building an industry empire (or casual anything, really), it's highsec. So on and so forth. If you want to get people out into low/nullsec/etc, then you have to enable them to do more things there.

By way of illustration, imagine EVE as a buffet with Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Pancakes, and Souffles. In nullsec, all of these items are not only on the table, but are of the finest quality: pure angus 1/2 pound juicy burgers, fluffy home-made pancakes, and so on. Unfortunately, they are behind a sheet of bullet proof polycarbonate that can only be opened by the people already there. Lowsec has some decent food, but no Souffles. The polycarbonate screen blocking access to the food is still there, and every bit as sturdy. In highsec, you've got frozen burgers, toaster waffles instead of pancakes, and boiled off-brand hotdogs that barely taste like meat, but now the bulletproof screen is made out of plastic wrap.

Now, which is going to attract more people? The good food that's inaccessable behind an impenetrable barrier, or the crappy food that can actually be eaten? Here's a hint, one of them involves starving to death and one doesn't. THATs your highsec problem. If you want to solve it, you have to figure out how to make other space more accessible. Or as I like to put it: A carrot on a stick will lead a donkey on forever, but not if the donkey is dead. Make the carrot as big as you like, that donkey's not going anywhere.

OMG, you are...special. Pretend I meant .01 ISK a day. There isnt a name for fractions of ISK, so I used pennies. So very dang sorry to have confused you.



The point isn't that the prices would not remain stable, the point is the market would crash so hard that LP Faction ships would eventually become cheaper than t1 frigates. If you don't understand why, or why this would be bad for people in general and new people especially, I can't help you.



So you are going to stick with me being a defenseless mouse to someone else's cat being good game design? Even better, the answer to being able to fight is to get someone else to do it for me? Do you not understand that one of the primary problems I am pointing out is that pirates will only engage defenseless ships? That my choices are wasting my time hiding and/or dieing, or wasting the time of the PvP escorts I bring with me? Would you enjoy the game if you just sat in station and were awarded isk for spinning your ship? PvP pilots want to fight, I want to carebear... If we join forces in LoSec only one of us gets to do what we want.

I have been playing for months, go back and forth between lowsec and high sec every day, and have encountered a camp ONCE, ever. And I did not die in it in my T1 indy ship, because I cloak+MWDed out of it.

And I have never once been so much as targeted, much less been shot at or killed, in low sec, despite flying around with hulls full of PI goods. Yes, I have seen pirates a lot, but I take basic, simple precautions like insta-undocking, looking at starmap statistics of recent ships killed, occasionally scouting out a questionable gate with a shuttle, and having a couple of safespots in areas I work a lot in.

I also made it through all 3 of my very first nullsec bubble camps alive (both directions each time) with nothing but a t1 crucifier with a proto cloak and MWD, by spending about an hour reading up first and using really easy to understand instructions available publicly on the goonswarm wiki. And it's not like I was surprised by them, either. I did it just for fun, and knew 100% there would be a camp by glancing at the starmap (30+ships killed in the last hour at a border gate, HMMM)

It really ain't that hard. More like a 6 foot tall chain link fence than bullet proof glass. It keeps out obese people (e.g. freighters) and timid, paranoid types who are afraid of getting busted by a mall cop, but that's about it.




Make the difference between high and low large enough and WELL PUBLICIZED, and people will be forced to at least check it out. And when they do, they will realize "oh... it's actually not particularly dangerous to get that sirloin steak."

Somebody in this thread suggested the high sec should only give you less than 1 isk per day? I must have missed that post. Can you link it for me? Thanks, you're a doll.




Considering that faction ships require t1 ships as ingredients, you're right: I don't understand how that could happen. Please explain why somebody would pay for a t1 ship and then spend a bunch of money and LPs to turn it into a faction ship which they then sell for less than the t1 ship.



No, if you join forces, then you get to mine or mission or whatever, and they get to fight the people who come and try to gank you. You're both staying busy.

And if you were cleverer still, you would come up with a system that ensures nobody will be bored no matter what. For example, the people in the PVP fits can bring a salvager if they have a spare high slot, and casually salvage wrecks for you as you run your missions, while they watch for incoming players.

Or if you're mining, one of you can seriously mine with a full on mining rig, and the other could have a gimpy rig with MLUs and cargo expanders replaced with reinforced bulkheads and DCU II. They still get ore and jetcan it and stuff when nothing is happening, but if PVPers come by, they can act as a very effective hull-tanked bait ship to keep the enemies around long enough to pin them down and kill them.

People do this kind of stuff ALL THE TIME. They sit for hours and mine together or gate camp or whatever. They play games, they shoot the breeze, they use remote market skills to trade and make money in between the excitement, etc. etc.

If you can't be creative enough or friendly enough to get people to work with you and entertain yourselves, then you have poor problem solving skills and little innovation and thus, frankly, you don't deserve the have the highest isk/hour in the game. In the world of the future that we are describing in this thread, your best choice would be to simply hang out in high-sec still, playing your reptitive zombie game that never changes. You wouldn't have to work in a team there, although you would make 1/4 as much isk as those who are willing to.

they can already fight back.

team up, secure the area, meet a few other player, and put pressure on the pirates, hunt them, when they gate camp, fall in with a ship you use to pve, but with pvp fit, and fight them back with you friends.

oh no, sorry, i forgot you want to achieve this solo, but guess what? low sec is no solo

this

A point was made that many alleged PvP attempts are nothing more than efforts to gank based exclusively on the belief that the target was not capable of being a threat to, or defending itself from, the attacking vessel.
Granted, there are plenty of killmails that exist for this reason.

Another point was made that PvE activities, be it mining in an exhumer or mission running in a ship fit for hard core missions, leave the pilot flying a vessel incompetent towards PvP engagements.
(This is rather obvious, and while some might suggest using a compromised fit, it goes against being fun. This is a game first and foremost, so FUN is pretty darned important.)

The answer is simple.

Start with the core concept that PvP must be possible, and practical, for any pilot that is in a part of space intended for free for all combat. High security space doesn't need this as much, but the logic applies when war decs make otherwise unprovoked attacks possible.

This means it must be possible to PvE in an enjoyable manner, while still having a valid PvP fit that cannot simply be rolled over as overwhelmingly as it currently is in many cases.
And by possible, I mean no incentive exists to compromise PvP ability to squeeze out extra mining or NPC fighting ability.
Your ideal mining, ratting, and missioning boat is then a PvP powerhouse, and your response to a threat can be a joyful, "Bring it!" every time.

so our idea is now to make PvE fits more like PvP fits.

so, omni tanks, propulsion modules, warp scrams, and a lack of (long term) cap stability

if missions did become shorter, more about range control and lowered dps amounts but spread it across damage types, then that would probably help

if this is how it goes then we may see more groups of peeps doing level 5's. but if the missioners are kept in once place for long enough, a pirate group will have the time to form up a perfect counter. acceleration gates give the missioners more warning in local i suppose.

in before afk cloaker threads for low sec lolol

The PVP/PVE mismatch is one part of the core problem. I support any solution to it- it deserves it's own threadnaught IMO, but I don't have any ideas on how to address it so I won't be starting it.
_

On to the highsec/lowsec business: Regardless of our respective opinions about the mechanics and how to address them, there is an irreconcilable difference between people like myself and people like the OP. The OP wants more targets to pvp with and more tears to collect; I want to increase the player retention and number of players of EVE as a whole. These are not mutually exclusive, but people like the OP have to accept that increasing EVE subscribers is a good thing and benefits everyone, themselves included, and make a couple sacrifices to accommodate it. The only sacrifice needed is to make lowsec safer, and move their current lowsec activities into NPC null, which is a pretty minor change. The gameplay you want will still be there, it's just going to move a few jumps. In it's place would be a whole new type of gameplay that noones ever seen before.

Head over to https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=187645 to see what I mean, and bump it up if you have feedback. Or start your own thread. I don't care. As long as this "nerf highsec" nonsense dies the death it deserves and the conversation moves on to a productive topic.