Assembly Hall

The overall goal of these suggestions: to make lowsec a vibrant place where many things happen, and many people live. These ideas may or may not be the right ones to do that; consider them all brainstorming and subject to discussion and change.

OP... answer me this one question...

Where do changes like this end?


Because they never seem to.
It just seems that things have been made incrementally safer and/or encourage people to avoid conflict over a the years. And this invites more risk adverse people to join the game and then advocate for better security and safety... which invites more risk adverse people to join... and the cycle seems to just keep looping back and feeding on itself.
And here's the best part; it changes nothing in the grand scheme of things.


Creating an NPC response to attacking people in low-sec will only force "pirates" to adopt suicide ganker tactics (except you can escape from these types of ganks) and the standings hits will just make "pirates" live full time in POSs... which is something only the rich can do (no more "poor pirates"... just the "good ones" that know what they are doing). This means that the risk adverse people will STILL not go out into low-sec because they can still be killed just as easily.
Nothing will change except for the fact that you have dramatically raised the entry barrier into "piracy."

Oh... but it doesn't stop there. If more ideas along the same lines as this one are put forth you'll have more changes being made that make "illegal attacks" more punitive and more draconian until you eventually have another version of high-sec.

Note: I've since been convinced by Nick Narrell that the better approach is to reduce the gap between PVP and PVE. A PVE pilot will be more likely to engage in emergent PVP if his current ship has a fighting chance at it, instead of being completely at the mercy of any PVP fit pilot.

didnt want those pvp'ers anyways

Nothing will push high sec people into low sec if it is not atleast as safe and profitable as high sec. That being said low-sec is not scary. I remember the first time I jumped into atlar with my blood pumping so hard my ears were ringing. All my little noob life everyone told me how scary low sec was. Then I got a fight, killed a frigate, lost my cruiser and my pod and while staring at the station wall realized...holy crap that was fun! I have since lived in low sec most of my EVE life, first as a carebear(ish) and later as a pirate. One of my past corps even mined in hulks in low-sec while the pipes ahead were scouted and gates were camped. Later I became a pirate myself and Im telling you if you know the game mechanics you can easily get into and out of low-sec with minimal danger. Its just getting past that initial culture of high-sec carelessness and adopting street smarts that is hard for most bears. There is no point in making low-sec more friendly or you are in essense expanding high-sec into low and tbh there is already plenty of high sec for everyone. Maybe even too much.

I appreciate your explanation... I just don't buy it.

If you know what you are doing low-sec is already very "low risk." Hell... you should see the amount of haulers and freighters that come and go through low-sec already. My alt is one of them. And he makes a killing in terms of profits by selling much needed ships and equipment to outlaws such as myself at a premium.

As far as low-sec "preventing many types of gameplay" due to its nature... I can say the same of high-sec and null-sec. The simple fact of the matter is... no real consensus will ever come with regards to how each should behave in relation to the other. High-sec, low-sec, and null-sec all require different types of methods and styles of gameplay.
The problem for many is that that the game's general mantra is that more risk should produce more reward. Not the other way around.


The issue is that there is no real problem and people are still trying to create one. If people learn to manage risk and use the options they have available they can do things they never thought possible.

I mainly fly blockade runners around an active faction warfare zone seeding equipment and ships. I have flown through Amamake's gatecamps. I have only been caught once (and that was because I screwed up using the MWD-cloak trick using a Deep Space Transport early on).


This is true. I do believe that "risk aversion" is a dominant motivation.
Many get ganked the first few times they jump in and and then decide that it just isn't worth another try. This is a common sight within the Minmatar Militia as many new recruits get caught in the Amamake-Ossogur gatecamp... after which they become scared of jumping into low-sec (even through alternate routes) without an "escort."

Again... once people learn how to enter and exit low-sec safely, there is little issue. It's the initial experiences that scars people.

And yes... I will concede... you can't really put this into hard data either way without doing numerous and detailed surveys of many, many players. Except that even this should be taken with a grain of salt as the first reaction of many is to "create greater security" rather than adapt to the current degree of hostilities.

Never understood risk-aversion in players. i started eve in a highsec mining corp for months, then immediately left with a couple of my mates, formed my own corp, put up a Platinum moon-mining POS in Devoid-lowsec, and proceeded to live out there for months, we still operated just fine, even with TEST burning null and lowsec not 3 doors over for days at a time. granted im now in a wormhole Merc alliance with those same mates, and maybe that just says something about the approach i take to the game, but seriously.


i have only ever been ganked ONCE in lowsec, adn that was my own damn fault, i flew an empty bestower into lowsec to pick up 200m3 of trit i had bought a month prior, hit a gatecamp, a crappy one. if i ahd flown anything BUT an untanked bestower, iw oudl have survived.

maybe im biased, but lowsec just doesnt seem all that dangerous, it seems the reason people avoid it isnt because "oh it keeps me from playing", its more that they refuse to go anywhere they cant fly an untanked HAULER safely, plenty of epople could switch to stealth-haulers and change very little about their old high-sec routine if they moved to lowsec.


wow i went on a rant didnt i? well, would prolly eb better to delete all this crap but i guess ill press post anyways.

Exactly.

The OPs suggestion appears to be making low-sec more akin to hi-sec in order to incentivise people to move from hi-sec to low-sec. But to what end? You have just extended hi-sec, albeit with a very small amount of increased risk and demolished the current low-sec completely... and then consider the change from the "new" low-sec to 0.0? The gap just got massive.

The proposal is pointless and without merit.

The incentives never work. The persistent idea that we need more players to low and null sec just isn't going to happen without diminishing risk to pointlessly low levels.

I don't see the proposal as being pointless, just not all that workable. That being said, EvE probably has most of the non-risk averse players already. Customer growth will either be slow or the risk will diminish.

If that happens the player losses will have to be surpassed by the growth. More safety, more losses, more growth, (repeat).

Conversely, the push for more PvP can only produce more complaints since the main source of new opposition remains new players or risk averse players or players (such as myself) unable to PvP effectively.

The game is mostly fine. Kindly don't make it squishy.

Yeah, that 1:1 yerr to carebear ratio... We're still talking about Eve, right?

Eve was, is, and always will be mostly pve activity when headcounts are concerned.

It's more like gaining 100 carebears and losing 1 pirate. Surely the 100 carebears interact with Eve more than the 1 pirate interacts with himself, not that anyone really cares.

The question is whether lowsec gaining population is a good or bad thing. Some people likes the way lowsec is atm. The fact that population will increase once safety increases was never in dispute.