Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You are completely disregarding player motivation / incentives as a factor. The system is broken when it doesn't provide enough incentive for people to provide adequate risk to gankers. For example, what if ganking was made to be unprofitable? Would that break something?

Also, its always a little hypocritical to support ganking then lecture a high sec pilot about not wanting to "work for your security" because gankers dont work for their security. Isn't that what the OP is asking? That gankers work for their security?

So this bit was just a complete lie right. You have only 1 loss to Concord ever, back in 2012.

This thread should just be locked. It's just another rant by a carebear against ganking.

So you do know some of the ways. Well done, there's hope for you yet.

As far as being super leet is concerned, that's your issue to deal with. I've not made any suggestion in that regard. You do seem rather emotional and maybe that's why you cannot say what the actual problem is. So far you keep mentioning cheap ship and a free pod and lack of consequences.

You fail to mention it's a group of cheap ships and free pods in a fleet. But you know what, you may be onto something. Groups of players working together in an MMO, is way too OP. It should be nerfed.

Here, I'll post it again. Looks like you failed to read it or understand it.

My only issue with ganking is ganking for direct profit. All other forms are fine as is IMO.

The reason I believe there to be an issue in ganking for profit, is because other professions risk a larger amount of isk and / or risk isk for a greater period of time:
* freighter risks x billion per jump
* miner is at risk while mining
* pve'ers are at risk while pveing
* pos / pocos are nearly always at risk
* traders risk market swings and manipulation almost all the time
Etc

Gankers really only risk their low cost ships for the few seconds it takes to gank.

This is why I believe ganking is currently out of balance and deserves more risk; although alternatively, I'd be fine with ganking not being profitable

Comprable to what? The guy who couldn't be bothered to tank his ship or use the right ship for the job? How exactly do you quantify that? The perceived lack of risk is only due to the fact the target put way too much in his ship. The only way to curtail that is to gank him.

Yes compared with other money making professions.

"way too much in his ship".... You mean... He tried to make more by risking more? This is a good profession mechanic IMO.

Other professions are similar.
* you want more pos/poco rewards? Take more risk
* trading rewards? Take more risk
* mining rewards? Take more risk
* pve rewards? Take more risk

Ganking rewards... Well um... Not much risk to begin with, risk of loss is often limited to opportunity cost.

I see where you're going with this. Suicide ganking for profit can be wildly profitable and the wildly profitable ganks get plastered all over the forums and killboards, but I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

Don't think of their ships as what they're risking. Think of their ships as an investment. Gankers know they're going to lose their ship, there's no risk there at all. The other things they invest in ganking are time and their sec status. Their sec status they can either squander, and suffer the consequences, or repair as they go, which leaves hisec open to them but takes way from their time.

None of those things, ships, time, or sec status, are risks. They're investments. The risk in in the element of chance involved in the gank itself. In particular:

1. There's the risk that the gank fails. Any number of things can go wrong here, be it insufficient DPS, target escaping the gank ship, direct player intervention, etc.

2. There's the risk that none of the good loot drops. The Loot Fairy, as they say, is a fickle mistress.

3. There's the risk that even if the good loot drops, someone else may make off with it before you can.

So, yes, there is an opportunity for huge returns on your investment. But with those gains come only after a string of random events that you cannot totally control.



I prefer to think of suicide ganking for profit like Invention. You have some base chance for success and you can modify those chances, but there is always the risk that no matter how hard you try you come up empty. Ganking is obviously less clear cut than invention, but when you look at it from a purely economic standpoint, you see that they are very similar in principle.

lol so i stepped away and didnt realize the number of replies, I'll reply to everyone but im not sure if i can get to them all tonight

@Paranoid Loyd
I dont want to misquote you but im going to rearrange your post and add some stuff in brackets to kinda categorize. Also, I must say thanks for actually responding to my point as opposed to the looping record of "YOU JuSt <3 HiSec and WaNt to bE rIsK aDverSe!11!!" that usually pops up on these threads xD.



I compressed the 4 i removed into: "thwarted attempt" because they were all slightly different ways of achieving the same result.

The ones i dont have listed under "Legit", dont see as applicable to this discussion (if ive grouped them and are interpreting you correctly anyway). I dont see Opportunity Cost as relevant just because it applies to anything you could possibly be doing in the game, out of the game, etc. The category listed as "Ganking Balances Ganking?" i dont believe is relevant in a discussion about balance because its essentially "A" is balanced by "More A"

But on to the "Legit" points, which are, and i see as, legitimate risks to gankers. I took the liberty of adding one to the list as well. The issue I see with these risks is still from the partial quote from earlier: "I am saying that as a profession (ganking for profit), gankers don't take on comparable risk"

For example, take a freighter ganking scenario, which is where gankers can take some of their largest losses:
* The freighter pilot's potential loss is much higher than the ganking fleet's potential loss
* The freighter pilot's potential gain is much less than the ganking fleet's potential gain
* The freighter pilot has risk potential for every jump in their route, the attempts to thwart a gank can only occur in the few seconds from the first shots til a few seconds after concord arrives.

so the gankers stand to gain substantially more, risk substantially less, and what they risk isnt at risk for as long compared to the freighter pilot.

That'l teach me to step away for most of the day. Lots of posts to respond to.
Funny you mention that, cause we hit dozens of hulks back in the day, but apparently the api didn't pull all that legacy info:

Battleclinic

There, thats better. Yep, 200% carebear here for sure. Just cause zkill didn't pull legacy data and most of the legacy Concord kills didn't post when it was just Concord doesn't mean ganking didn't happen. Definitely pissed off a lot of carebears for sure, even got a few to Concord their drakes to grab a frig.

So you do understand this at some base level. As in the OP, the consequence to completely disregarding your sec status you would not have the ability to dock or jump through gates. And as you said, sec status is one of their investments, like say loot to a PVE guy or minerals to a miner. You can trade your sec status for the ability to change systems or dock in stations when you aren't actively in space in hi-sec. Lets say you value being able to move around in hi-sec, then the value of your sec status is more important to you, and you keep it high enough to still move.

Glad you mentioned freighters, because those are just as easy for gankers to protect if not easier than a normal hauler kill on a gate. Let me tell you how it has started going down for me:

Freighter pilot gets caught by a bumper, they can't warp so they are stuck. Bumper makes call to gank fleet. Freighter pilot (I'll call him The Victim cause I hate typing freighter) sees the complete futility in any action as they have been aggressed against their will with no consequence to the aggressor (the bumper) and log out to go do something more productive than internet spaceships. The gankers have him flagged and see that he logged off, they send an Ibis to suicide to keep him in space despite being logged off. Once they feel safe enough and/or have spent enough noob ships to extend his timers they let his ship ewarp. Once he lands at his ewarp they arrive once again but this time in force, safely 1,000,000km off grid. Safe to kill and loot without the hassle of onlookers or bystanders which might gum up their plan. Occasionally however some enterprising folk have figured out their system and get the sig of the victim ahead of time so they can also easily warp to his ewarp safe. Upon seeing this do-gooder show up, the gankers simply use their 30 catas to clear the guy off field so they can gank and loot without worrying about being caught. Now they used to just bring in some blackbirds and jam gank the guy trying to prevent the reward being given so easily to the gankers. But the do-gooders had come up with more effective fits to counter the jams so the gankers just blap them with catas and are done with it. The best chance a bystander has of preventing the profiteering from killing a freighter is by getting into a recon cruiser, wait for them to spend their catas on the victim, then decloak, pre-lock the would be looting freighter, and put a salvage drone on the wreck, thereby putting the gankers on the clock and inviting them to a game of chicken, hoping they didn't have a few dozen more gank pilots waiting in case the first couple dozen failed.

So how exactly was the OP a request to nerf ganks? Did I ever request for Concord to be made stronger and better and faster? I had only said that there should be a tangible consequence to having bad standing with places. Not being allowed to dock in a station has absolutely ZERO to do with Concord, but your feeble griefing brain probably has issues with understanding someone is talking about a side effect of ganking being negative status, and since the word "gank" was used you automatically presumed the request was to buff Concord.

And further, where in this whole thread did I or Chaos ever ask for noobs to be protected by CCP so that they wouldn't get ganked or for CCP to hold their hands to make it easier. Best we can do to protect noobs is to inform them, and we all know (I've even stated it in this thread) that educating noobs is never ever ever actually something that could ever work. They just don't want to learn. I've had plenty of repeat customers I've ganked several times because of that very idea.

Again, all I have been saying this whole time is to think of it as if hi-sec NPCs treated pilot standings the way null sec alliances do, you aren't cool with the owners, sorry about your luck, might want to fix that.