Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TL;DR: instead of completely removing the ability to legally shoot corpmates, make it require you to be a member of the corp for one month.


Though I've never awoxed myself and I've lived in lowsec for 14 of my 15 months playing EVE, I've always enjoyed reading all the fun and interesting awox stories.

I've read the relevant part of the CSM minutes and understand CCP's concerns. Making corps triple-check every application is a bit of a PITA. And awoxing is certainly an un-intuitive mechanic for a new player ('in highsec nobody can legally shoot me except my own corpmates?! wtf?').

On the other hand, EVE is also an incredible social experiment, and the capability to backstab your own corpmates creates content that is unique to EVE.


So why not keep the awoxing mechanic, but make it so you have to actually earn your corpmates' trust before you use it against them?

Make it so you can legally shoot corpies only after spending one month in corp.


CEOs and recruiters wouldn't have to worry about casual awoxers just looking for easy fun. They'd have a whole month to actually get to know the guys they're recruiting. If they don't like them or if they're inactive (just waiting for their 'awox timer' to tick down) they can kick them any day.


And awoxing would become a somewhat less casual profession. Not only would you need to stick with your target corp for a month, presumably you'd also have to be active, doing stuff and - more importantly - socializing.

And who knows? Maybe after a month you'd grow fond of your victims, and decide not to kill them after all. Or maybe you'll hate them even more, and use that month to carefully plan something bigger than killing a random mining barge or two. Every awox would have a real story behind it, not just a dull 'bollocks, that new guy that nobody really knows nor cares about is shooting us'.


This proposal aims to eliminate 'casual' awoxing but keep real infiltration and treachery, in true EVE style.

Should the change go though, Where does it say that you an no longer legally shoot corp mates? Ah, you missed that part since there is no PVP flag except when you undock (Psst! You could still shoot just with CONCORD responding to the situation).

Highsec.....CONCORD....Aggression mechanic change....nothing to see here folks, just consistent btching of people who cannot adapt, cannot even try to gain trust, cannot seek ways to lure their targets to low/null/wormhole to entrap them; for them the game is just a slower version of COD or Counterstrike where the KM matters and somewhere they believe that highsec is too safe that they must make it un-safe, while they hide in highsec until they strike. Amirite ? Guess many should uninstall, since you can still shoot corp mates anywhere else, use the duel function and go through hull to get the pod accepting the CONCORDOKKEN since you lied, or just plain old gank....highsec in not safe even when you are pretending to be a viper, so why should you have protection from CONCORD when you bite ? Outside Highsec....the change wouldn't even matter.

Let's not immediately derail this into a good guys vs. bad guys shouting contest, ok?

Aqriue doesn't support the proposal, that's fine, let's move along.

I don't like any kind of system or mechanic that forces inactivity. Without going too mutch into it, it puts up walls where there should be none.

Sorry to say but you'll get a -1 from me

This compromise proposal is futile, because it doesn't really address the problem the awox removal intends to address. Your proposal keeps the mechanic fully intact with a delay. It undermines the primary goals of the proposed CCP change, but in a way it is even worse then the current situation. Not only does it try to maintain the current barriers to recruiting unknowns in to corps it also introduces another unwanted complication to the aggression rules. Aggression rule changes according to arbitrary timers. So your compromise fails to deliver on on the primary goals of what CCP wants to do, but it also makes things worse with the aggression rules. This isn't a compromise. It's dead on arrival bargaining attempt to keep a bad mechanic.

The more realistic compromise is making the corp-on-corp aggression a choice for the corporation with clear visibility of that choice to outsiders, with no way to quickly or in secret switch between the options to prevent griefing. This way it can remain as a choice, but most of the goals CCP wants to achieve can still be achieved. The only one suffering slightly being the clarity of the rules, since you would maintain 2 different rules for corps. The corps that don't want to deal with the drama corp-on-corp. aggression causes don't have to and the ones who utilize it regularly, like RvB, can maintain things as normal.

What do you think CCP's primary goals are?

My understanding was that the main goal is to remove the 'omg he can freely shoot me in highsec!' barrier to recruiting new players.

This proposal achieves that goal perfectly: the 'new' or 'unknown' player cannot freely shoot you anymore.

After a month, he's neither 'new' nor 'unknown' anymore. He's either:

'that guy that barely logged in' --> you kick him. doesn't matter if he's an awoxer or not, he's useless to the corp anyways

or

'that nice dude that I ran dozens of missions with and that always has something funny to say' --> you keep him because you like him. If he backstabs you, drama ensues, but 'good' drama. Not the 'yeah I was bored so I joined just to awox' type, rather the 'how could you be so nice for a month and then backstab me' type, which makes for great stories.


On the aggression mechanics part I see your point, but I honestly don't know how many people actually use that except for webbing freighters (easy to do with the duel mechanic). I live in lowsec, we do our group PVP practice by going out in a group and PVPing somebody.

I believe you have this concept backwards, you must first be in a corp for xx days before you are allowed to shoot other corp members.
I don't think if implemented in this was it would work the other way around.

Its a bit dificult to go into spesifics here without also going into the whole argument about awoxing in high sec. I'll try to make it as simple as possible, but sorry if I derail the OP. If you want my stance on this whole thing, feel free to evemail me, or open a thread in the relevant channel, and direct me to it.

From what I understand, an awoxers main goal is to cause as much havoc as possible in a corp, within the shortest amount of time. In high sec it is also the only mechanic currently where you can agress another player in high sec, without Concord intervention(excluding duels). I'm not going to argue that it might act as a detterent against casual awoxers in high sec, since most casual players don't want to invest too mutch time into anything. But it is also true that, while most EVE players are prepared to lose the ship they fly in, they prefer to keep it a lot more if the chance presents itself.

Your proposal, in its current iteration, encourages inactivity(waiting for an arbitrary timer to go down). That is the reason I don't support it.

I like it. +1

But it should not be up to the game when it is most ideal to agress someone else, it should be you.

It would be similar to; do this mission now, and get 10% of the reward, or wait 30 days and get three times the reward. Or mine this ore and wait 30 days to get twice the processing yield. In my opinion, encouragin inactivity no matter what the end result may be, is bad.

And in regards to this:
since it seems you missed it I'll say it again.

I'm not going to argue that it might act as a detterent against casual awoxers in high sec, since most casual players don't want to invest too mutch time into anything.


I get what he is saying. I just dont agree with his suggestion in its current iteration, for the reason I have stated previosly. It might have come off as too strong to say forced. For that I apologise.