Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TL;DR: HiSec mechanics create an environment where players feel safe, no matter what they're doing. I believe this is detrimental to player experience, particularly less experienced players. As such, I suggest some changes to CONCORD that remains unchanged for newbros, but gently encourages older players to work together or explore other areas of the game.

Contents
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[1.0] The Problem
[2.0] The Proposal
[3.0] Benefits
[4.0] Drawbacks
[5.0] In Closing

[1.0] The Problem

Player retention is limited by many factors. Two of the factors this topic is made to address are:

1) The "social wall" (p26, CSM8, August Summit minutes) where new players don't always engage in the community-driven aspects of the game. Instead the subset that doesn't engage socially will focus exclusively on solo content, such as mission-running or mining, get bored and ultimately quit. Currently, the social wall exists for players who don't already have social ties with veteran players. I believe this wall can be lowered by encouraging veteran players to reach out for assistance. Practically all content in HiSec is soloable, in fact, very little of it is conducive to team effort - players are forced to share loot from NPC kills and containers.

2) The fear of what happens outside the "womb" of HiSec. HiSec in its current form creates an environment where players feel safe or at least feel entitled so. As CCP Falcon already clearly stated: "Simple fact of the matter is, that you're not suppose to feel safe in New Eden." - Source. Players that prefer the safety of HiSec are likely to fall into one of two categories: They get bored and quit or do something stupid and get themselves killed. Either way, CCP loses customers that go on to share their negative experience with friends and acquaintances, stating that EVE is boring or that it's full of griefers. The womb of HiSec also discourages the open world PvP for which EVE is so famous.

I would like to tackle these limitations by introducing some changes to the way CONCORD works.

[2.0] The Proposal

Change CONCORD so that it only responds to unlawful aggression against certain classes of ships. In addition, remove kill rights as they currently exist. Instead of generating a kill right, flag any player that acquires a criminal flag as a suspect with a ~1-30 day duration.

The classes of ships still under CONCORD protection can be considered "newbie friendly". These classes are:

• Escape pods
• All rookie ships
• All T1 & faction shuttles
• All T1 & faction frigates
• All T1 & faction destroyers (including the Noctis)
• All T1 & faction cruisers
• All T1 industrials (i.e., haulers)
• T1 mining frigate (i.e., the Venture)
• All T1 mining barges

I have loosely defined "newbie friendly" ships as any ship that is likely to be piloted by a character less than 3 weeks old.

While faction ships are prohibitively expensive for a newbie, their skill requirements are relatively low. By limiting eligibility for CONCORD protection to specific skills, we can ensure that players don't train for skills for ships they're not willing to fly due to lack of protection. Much like ship classes that are restricted for trial accounts, a highlighted message can be included that makes it abundantly clear that any ship that requires that specific skill will not be eligible for CONCORD protection.

As a note: This change has no impact on other aggression mechanics. Wars, duels, sentry gun agression, suspect and GCC timers, etc remain completely unchanged.

That said, there may be need for changes to the default overview to make it clearer which targets can be attacked with and without CONCORD intervention. Criminal and suspect flags may need to be altered or a new type of criminal flag may be needed to differentiate between a player that has recently conducted an illegal, but not CONCORDable act and the GCC flag.

[7.0] In Closing

I would like these changes to encourage new game play opportunities, and create an entire new metagame when it comes to HiSec piracy and the fight against it. I want to discourage players from feeling "bigger is better" and racing for those shiny battleships, while also creating potential for newbies to see that big ships aren't as scary to <1M SP characters in small ships as they might initially believe. I want to do this without making players feel like they're being forced out of safety. I'm hoping these changes will allow players to progress though content at a pace at which they feel most comfortable.

I want EVE Online to do a better job at retaining players who want to be a part of the sandbox, even if it means potentially alienating those who have no interest in it as I believe the long term pros will outweigh the short term cons.

I for one am excited about the possibility of the conflict that can arise between pirates and their enemies: white knights, PvE focused characters and the anti-ganking community. The latter parties may see a huge nerf to CONCORD, but the fate of HiSec is in turn, placed in their hands, greatly empowering them to inflict much greater damage to pirates.

Do you think these changes would help reach these goals? I'm very interested in constructive feedback on the matter.

Thank you very much to those of you that have read the entirety of my (James 315 length) post.

Yeah, it's a touchy subject, I know. Hopefully it'll inspire some mature debate...

OK, Really hopeful.



http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140221195002/infamous/images/6/65/Happy-oh-stop-it-you-l_large.png

Where have I been unclear?

It's not that it's unclear, it's actually pretty well written. Tyberius pretty much summed up why it makes no sense.

i like the idea but it`s never gonna happen because alot of ppl wil cry and ragequit.
and even if this was a thing going to pass i think all kind of industrial ships should be protected, i see the point of big combat ships and T2 combat ships being not protected by concord but the idustrial ships should be protected.

I'm inclined to disagree. In that there isn't any option for antipiracy. Not retaliatory, anyway. "White knights" in their current form are a useless, albeit noble, player subset in the game. It is inordinately difficult to protect a player that has made a bad decision. The AFK Mackinaw, the autopiloting freighter with a 5B ISK cargo are victims which cannot be protected. You know these players are doomed to die, but you can't know when and ganks are lightning fast, typically over in about 20 seconds. Anyone trying to protect a neutral playing suboptimally faces a task which creates hours of boredom, yet demands fast reactions, not to mention the risk of losing your own ship in the process.

Currently, by far and away the most effective way to hurt gankers is to simply not make yourself a target. Fit modestly, fly ships that you can fly competently, fly the appropriate ship for the job, fit a tank, create & use bookmarks, use d-scan and other intel tools, make friends, form fleets etc. Each and every one of these methods are preventative and demand knowledge from the victim before they're ganked and more significantly: defenders/white knights simply are not part of this equation. The best any antipiracy group can do is simply educate newer players on what ships to fly and how to best fit them for survival.

In an attempt to keep my OP somewhat concise (believe it or not), I didn't expand all that much on the implications white knights and defence fleets I expect will have on ganking activity. This in itself is a massive discussion, so I'll try to keep it brief. I'll also focus on freighter ganking - again, to keep this (relatively) brief.

First and foremost: Freighters can't be bumped. This instantly destroys the possibility of having a neutral ship effectively keep a target pointed indefinitely. This means that a fleet cannot remain safely docked and "x up" when an opportunity presents itself. The most effective method is to have the fleet wait for a target on grid. This greatly impacts the viability of ships not under CONCORD protection, sitting on grid with <-5 sec status not only leaves you vulnerable to unwanted PvP but also forces you to deal with FacPo - this is not acceptable. Career pirates will be forced to routinely keep their sec status above -4.5 just to gank in 0.5 sec systems (an operational cost). There is however, no way to escape the consequences of properly managed kill rights. Any white knight can use the kill rights available to him to harass gank fleets while in a T1 cruiser (thus protected by CONCORD). The white knight is free to engage the pirates one at a time at his leisure while the pirate's fleet mates are powerless to act. This massively skews fights in the white knight's favour.

As a result, gank fleets should move away from large numbers of disposable catalysts, just as much as I expect them to move away from alpha tornadoes. Instead, I expect to see a proliferation towards well rounded T1 cruiser fleets. Of course, seeing as gank ships aren't necessarily lost in a gank, HiSec pirates may instead opt for MJD-equipped BSes or possible speedy T2 variants.

When faced with more powerful pirates in bigger, more advanced ships, white knights have the option of forming small fleets. I expect the end result is interesting, exciting small-gang warfare between the good and evil residents of HiSec - a prospect I find most exciting.

Side note regarding kill rights. I've seen suggestions that killrights should remain active until the pirate loses the value of his victims' ships. With these changes to CONCORD, a pirate is much more inclined to keep his ship - as such, kill rights can become a much more powerful counter measure. Combine that fact with buffed kill rights and you ensure that the pirate will face long term consequences for his evil deeds.

That logic still bears issues. The suggested rule change significantly compounds the gravity of the issue FOR THE LOSS OF CONCORD PROTECTION ONLY. It still leaves the actual performance differences to be discovered the same as now, and makes that discovery more likely to end in loss.

That also assumes such a warning doesn't deter both old and new players to simply cease all usage of ships outside of protection, especially those who are already asocial and have little need of specialized roles. when Gilas in level 3's become the new focus due to machs in level 4's being deathtraps leaving the same isolation for vets and pitfalls for new players as the popularity/prices of protected ships increases, what can we say we've really accomplished?

Force and encourage are fundamentally the same here. Making something prohibitive to use is similar enough to a mandate for most purposes to realistically say there is no choice, which is the same as being forced. What hasn't been explained is why effective loss of choice is a good thing.

I've yet to see it explained how this will get gankers into anything expensive. Gankers can and will use any benefit, including selective protection, to their advantage. One such advantage in using protected ships is immunity to disruption. A hostile force wishing to white knight still cannot freely engage if they use the ships you want concord to respond to.

On the other hand you seem to simply discount risk evaluation. you speak of quiet corners for running missions, but with level 4 agents in static locations and clear indications of where activity occurs through tools like dotlan you can bet your quiet system won't stay that way for long. Especially when aggressors can move freely to you without risk by again using still concord protected tools.

The reason there is doubt of your conclusions becoming reality is that your conclusions count on people doing things that are not the easiest safest and smartest way to act for no reason other than the idea that they could.

4th, 5th, 6th & 7th paragraphs.


And when they come, you can't switch to a L3 mission running ship? What about moving on to new pastures? What about working as a team to kick the would-be pirate until he gets the message he'll face no quarry there?