Crime & Punishment

Well I just listened to the manifesto, and it sounds a bit like James 315 is scared that the miners are going to wreck the game for everyone. It's pretty amusing stuff really, but I cannot see it happening.

Miners are pretty easy to kill for a start... [more stuff]

You got me.

It is mostly not only.

In fact freighters are "fair game".

Are you hatching a cunning plan? I hope so, they're usually amusing as hell.

I can't help with a or b, I'm assuming something similar to your past endeavours, when you're ready to proceed feel free to contact me about donating a prize or two.

Thing is, while the ships are easy to kill (etc. etc.), it's not the ~ships~ that they're really talking about, but rather the player with entitlement issues behind the screen at the other end.

Go look in GD, and you'll see two (if not more) threads started by that type of player --> they believe that "hisec should be [100%] safe" and that "CCP should protect them". Pretty much they're calling to make EvE less like EvE and more like "every other MMO out there".

Actually they are calling to make highsec like very other MMO, not "EvE"

I honestly do not understand what your issue is with HIghsec when you live in 0.0. Worry about your own space instead of somewhere light years away you have nothing to do with. There are plenty of things wrong with 0.0 also.

Hi Lilly, can I just place before you a telling quote from James 315?

"everything in EVE is connected.

James 315 is the biggest threat to EVE. If you think about the situation properly without being delusional, it's the only conclusion to come to.

He is responsible for several dozen unsubscribed accounts, perhaps over 100. I got in one little fight and my mom got sacred, she said, "Youre moving with your antie and uncle in Bel Air.

How many people have subscribed because of him by comparison? A couple dozen? loyalanon himself admitted they couldn't find any extra bodies for the alliance tournament if it was needed, so clearly it's not much more than that.

The worst part about James 315 is that he's created a very "us vs us" culture within EVE. It used to be us vs them. Them being the non-EVE MMO gamers.

James 315 has turned high-sec into an elementary school playground and it's killing the game.

I think a more accurate way to state the problem is, "Mining is a broken mechanic, but it is so central to the economy of Eve that CCP doesn't dare fool with it much". In hindsight I think CCP understands that mining really needed to be a passive rather than active mechanic -- in fact, I think they applied the lessons they learned with mining to the PI mechanic.

Mining combines the worst aspects of all resource-gathering game mechanics: it is a mechanical, repetitive task that takes place at fixed points in the game world and requires little skill but much time to perform. Eve's mining mechanic cries out for automation -- extensive use of alts and outright botting are inevitable. Tedious, un-fun, but absolutely essential to the game: that's Eve's mining system for you.

Why has such a lousy gaming mechanic persisted for so long? After all, Eve's central mining mechanic is little changed since Eve's launch a decade ago. We've gotten better ships, but essentially the game is the same: warp to belt, point lasers at rocks, then stare with glazed eyes at the screen as your ore-hold fills up. Lather, rinse, repeat. Year after year people complain about how boring and dumb mining is, and year after year CCP does nothing about it. Why? Because Eve's economy would collapse without a daily influx of huge amounts of asteroid ore. Huge amounts. There aren't enough human miners in the game to keep up the flow of ore needed. So botting, while never actually sanctioned, has been more or less accepted as a necessary evil -- as long as the botters don't make it too obvious.

I'm not sure what to propose at this point. If CCP were going to fool with the mining mechanic, they'd have done it by now. I think they're afraid of totally wrecking the economy if they try to change mining too much; any substantial change to mining risks interrupting the flow of ore, which in turn risks interrupting the flow of minerals for ship-building. If I had my way, I'd make mining more like PI where you set up your arrays, turn them on, and let them run.

I dislike botting because it's actually an indicator of a broken game. I don't have any huge moral beef with it apart from the way it disadvantages players who don't bot. But Eve's mining mechanic is so dreadfully tedious and un-fun that automating the activity is the only way to engage in it without going insane.

tl;dr version: botting is the only sane way to deal with Eve's horribly broken mining mechanic. If CCP wants to end botting, they need to change how mining is done, at a fundamental level.