Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP knows it, you know it and even I know it...

A lot of new players joins EVE every day, and leave shortly after, simply because they can’t find someone to play with. As we all know, the key to keeping both old and new players around, is to find other players to do stuff with. This is what keeps EVE alive, it's an MMO after. Especially new players, that also needs someone to teach them how EVE works. There is a lot of corps that really wants to let players in, and even help new players, but are simply too afraid of the security risk of involved. This security risk is often the only and biggest factor, stopping corps from letting new members join.


So what is it that they are afraid of?
Thieves, Spies and AWOXER. EVE is known for its massive meta-game, and is what drives a lot players in and keeps them. But the downside is the protection against it. A lot of corps requires FULL API access, and some go even further to stop this and require RL information. The security risk can be divided into two groups – Sleepers and corp gankers.


Sleepers…
These are almost impossible to stop, but their damage can be greatly reduced by common sense, and a limiting access to assert and info, to only what is needed. The time a sleeper needs to invest, is very high, and the reward very uncertain at best (Unless the corp is run by fools). This is an area that CCP REALLY needs to look at, BUT with the announced change of POSes, and thereby likely also corporation’s rules and rights. It’s fairly pointless to suggest changes to the current system. Corp gankers on the other hand…


Corp Gankers (AWOXER)…
These are also almost impossible to stop, and so is the damage they can do. To make things even worse, the time they need to invest is VERY short. To be able to kill a mining op, indy ship on a haul, a PvE ship and so on, takes VERY VERY little SPs and skill (but a bit of strategy and planning), and there is no paper trace for any “retribution”. The profit can be moved, trial account dropped and new started.

I’m a firm believer in that HS or any other space should NOT be risk free – this is EVE, with risk and rewards. Also that ganking is fair game (both done and been ganked). But I also believe in that there needs to be consequences – BOTH ways.

If I gank someone random in HS – I get concord.
If I don’t want to get concorded, I can declare war, move out of HS or similar.
I can’t shoot other people in my alliance, my fleet or any other random person in HS.
UNLESS they are in my corp…

For some reason, the only people not protected from ganking in HS, are my corp mates.
(War/dueling is a different case, as you are made aware of the suspension of crime watch, for valid reasons)


But why is this?
I believe that the reason for this loophole is that in the past, before the safety button. People got concorded by mistake for shooting a corp mates in fleets doing PvE or similar. This then grow into also letting people test their fits safely, by testing on corp mates. Then grow into also griefing/ganking/profit hunters. I’m sure that CCP had not intended this, and when they found out, they valued “not getting randomly concorded” higher than “corp ganking”.


What has changed?
Well, with the introduction of the safety button AND dueling, there is now no longer any reason to why I should be able to shot at a corp mate. I will no longer get randomly concorded, and I can test my fit in a duel, or even on the test server if need be.
So to help corps to able to take in new players, and thereby reduce the amount of players leaving EVE and let us all have more fun and less paranoia:



PLEASE remove the exception that allows corp mate ganking.



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Who am I?
I been playing EVE for 6 years. Done: HS, low sec, null sec and WHs. Been a solo player, corp mate, corp CEO and Alliance CEO. Made billions, lost some. Ganked, got ganked. Done HS, low and WH wars. Indy, PvE, PvP, trade and everything else. Am down to 5 accounts. Oh, and soon Dust player :)

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Short version:
Improve EVE
Reduce loss of players
Remove free ganking of corp mates.

No. For all the reasons posted against before.

summary: baw baw remove the ability for corpmates to scam steal and kill you

response: no, go play hello kitty online

Edit: The implication that corp mates being able to kill you is harming new player retention is stupid. There's zero evidence of this, the fact that it's ALWAYS been around and subscriptions are doing nothing but growing suggests to me that it isn't an issue at all.

Every carebear and his mother uses "wont someone think of the new players" bullshit when trying to make themselves safer. Stop it.

But you really have a good point here, one of the main reasons new players have difficulties in finding good corps is their inner security and paranoia.... Mine ask even for real life, name, phone number, address and we have a 5 hours meeting in Teamspech. ( But totally worth it, everyone got to be friend out of the game too).

But the main dificulty we find is in the corp role management, and in the Assets security.

We have a POS in a WH, and it is a hell to manage everyone's stuff in the same corp hangar and to know who owns what ship there... CCP really should improve the Inventory system related to this.

About the issue of corp firing, this have some positive sides, once or twice we needed to expell some people from the corp because they was ignoring some rules, (those people that just don't care.) , so the CEO called a fleet and we ganked him, letting him in the hull of his carebear ship. then we tried to talk again with him, and we got a bad response and a kill-mail...

Other occasion, we was just testing fits in HS in ower corp fleet... and we just forgot that there was also an alliance member with us... Concord gave me thekill-mail, as I was testing a long range ECM on my friend... = /

So there is many thing to improve there.... I just hope that CCP speed up the development...

I completely agree, we need to remove the protection high sec alliances have from awoxers and extend the "no concord interference" from corporation to the whole alliance.

no if they wanna Deck a whole alliance then PAY for fee to deck a whole alliance.

and besides i can see more benefit for smaller numbers to stratigically deck single corps in an alliance then biting off more then they can chew takeing on an alliance.

So uh, what do they do with that information if you do corp gank or thieve?

CEO toggle: "Allow sanctioned PvP between corp mates [ ] "

Won't prevent theft, but would save a lot of Orcas.

Corp gankers, AWOXERs, should be fixed. There is really no reason that you should be able to do this without getting concorded.

We usually use it to plan meetings and events, so we pick the city that is closer to everyone, or we call the closest to have a beer. ( We are one of the EVE official FanSites, so there are always something happening especially near fanfest...

The most extreme that I have ever seen was once when we caught one ex-member, that hacked other member Account and "destroyed" a 4 year old char with all assets from another member. (We matched his IP provided by CCP with our TS3 server IP log. Same IP in the same city, with him typing and talking to everyone using it, and more some other facts making 100% sure that it was him). Yes, one of our directors works with Digital security and created a big report of it.

We sent it to CCP, the destroyed char was somewhat revived (manny assets lost in the process, and the player left EVE). The hacker lost his Char, and if I remember someone sued him in RL but I'm not sure what happened after that...

Anyway, the members personal information are protected by law, and we can not "sell" it or anything like that. And only a few are allowed to see/use it...(It is really useful to call someone if allowed to warn them preventing assets losses, or sending a package with the last "EVE Maps" Book making someone really happy!)

All In-Game issues are solved In-Game.

But I think my corp is an exception... Don't spread your personal information around... fallow the EULA, read the small lines of every contract, and don't give your password to others! Don't fly what you can't afford to lose! and Fly safe!