Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Before suggesting changes it is best for me to explain the problem being addressed, and why the eve community should care about it. I like to think I am a fairly well known (if incompetent) high sec ganker, griefer and low sec/w-space carebear and pvper. At this point I have a combined total of one-hundred thirty freighters and jump freighters killed in high security space, most of which were killed with other players on grid actively trying to prevent our fleet's success. Unfortunately for them, it is nearly impossible to prevent a ship from dying unless the ship's pilot is willing to plan ahead and take steps to ensure his safety. I also have participated in multiple anti-ganking fleets and know how boring it can be waiting for the gank fleet to undock, while trying to follow the poor intel provided about the locations of multiple scouts.

Feyd already has an excellent article on his blog for how players should be able to function as concord, and there have been other suggestions for bubbles that only affect low security status players. Both of these ideas are intriguing, but have significant issues with the current way that security status, limited engagements, and criminal timers work in high sec.

I would like to propose a series of simple changes that I believe would increase the extent of interactions between gankers or other low security status players, and players that group up to stop them.

Premises:
1. If your fleet includes players that are below -5 security status, faction police makes it nearly impossible to gank a tanked, escorted and alert target in high security space.
2. In a similar note, it is extremely difficult to save a target from a gank because doing so requires knowledge of where the gank will be, and the ability to kill many small ships prior to them unloading a significant amount of dps. Virtually the only ships capable of pulling this off are smartbombing ships that will have to go criminal during the attempt.
3. Being a white knight is obscenely boring because of the 15 minute cooldowns between ganks, and the fact that your action is completely dependant on the gank fleet.
4. Having a security status low enough to be shot at freely by other players means that faction police will already be chasing you. There is no point in a low security status player being in high sec in a normal combat capable ship.

Suggestions:
1. Swap the security status penalties to the following:

Above -2.0 - no penalties
Below -2.0 - Any player may shoot at you in high security space.
Below -2.5 - Shot at by faction police in 1.0 space.
Below -3.0 - Shot at by faction police in 0.9 space.
Below -3.5 - Shot at by faction police in 0.8 space.
Below -4.0 - Shot at by faction police in 0.7 space.
Below -4.5 - Shot at by faction police in 0.6 space.
Below -5.0 - Shot at by faction police in 0.5 space.

Also, when doing this, consider dropping faction police to lower sec statuses, perhaps drop the starting point from -2.5 to -5, or slow the decay to every 1 sec status instead of every 0.5. This is to allow for more fights in high sec between would be enforcers of the law and criminals.

2. Shorten criminal timers.

Yes, I know, I know, this sounds like its just a buff to ganking. I really do feel that if criminal timers were shorter, more players would turn up to fight against gank fleets though. Having been in fleets that were attempting to stop ganks, the wait period is obscenely boring. This is also in conjunction with the following change.

3. Lengthen limited engagement timers to be longer than criminal timers.

These three changes combined would allow low but not -10 sec status players to fight against white knights and similar in real combat. I am routinely told by targets, "Come fight like a real man" or something similar. The reality is that game mechanics currently prevent me from doing so without spending significant amounts of money on criminal tags. Similarly, wardecs against us are a joke as even gankers that are above -5 sec status often have to stay docked up to avoid faction police. We cannot provide a fight to the people that want it, and instead are forced to use some stupid game of cat and mouse while continuing to gank.

You will note that I did not put clear numbers in the above suggestions. I do not have these currently and feel they would have to be discussed and tested before implementation.

I hope the above will allow for better gameplay for anyone who attempts to pvp in high sec, whether they have good intent or ill. I have shown these changes to a variety of players, both white knights and gankers, and the feedback has been generally positive. There are of course points of disagreement on what the actual numbers should be, but most have agreed that having players go perma-suspect before faction police gets involved would be an improvement, and that having limited engagement timers be longer than criminal timers would provide more options for interesting game play. Players that I have talked to about this include Jennifer en Marland, Gorila Vengaza, James 315, Sabriz Adoudel, and Tora Bushido.

Please keep commentary civil and on topic, and let me know what you guys think.

BeBopAReBop RhubarbPie

Edit: Please read through the thread before commenting. There have been some really good suggestions by other players in the first three pages.

I actually like all of these changes.

Especially the -2.0 - -2.5 range that allows for a player police force in HS.

Interesting changes, and definitely something that would shake up combat in highsec.
I like it
+1 from me

Currently facpo begins spawning at -2.0 and scales to -4.5 and at -5 any player may shoot at the criminal.
I want to move the ability to be shot at by other players up to -2.0, and drop the faction police penalties by 0.5 at each sec status to begin at -2.5 and scale to -4.5. Honestly, faction police is a far far harsher penalty that being able to be shot at by other players, and it makes no sense to have it stifle player interaction by having it at higher sec statuses than allowing players to shoot at each other.

Hell I could live with a complete reversal of the current mechanics with a scaling sec status for players being able to shoot you, and facpo in all systems at -5. All I really want is a zone of sec status where players that want to stop my actions can, but where I don't have to deal with faction police.

As for the sec status limit, my suggestion lowers it by 0.5 over what it is now, which at the values we're talking about is 2-3 ganks or so if I don't kill any pods.

Why the buff to PVP in High sec to begin with? Go to Low sec and Null sec. That's where you can PVP to your heart's content with no NPCs interfering with you, especially if you are a pirate. Why buff PVP in an area of space that puts severe limitations to your activity and that would require significant changes (ie. turned into Low sec) to accommodate your activities. Why should people even come back from Low sec to PVP in High sec when PVP outside Duels, Wars and by shooting criminals/pirates is an illegal activity and should remain so, and when you have to resort to timers and screwed tactics which obviously don't satisfy you in order to get PVP? Why don't people make Low sec and Null sec more active and keep PVP in High sec with all its limitations and frustration to a minimum? Why is it that people constantly want to go back to High sec to PVP there in safety instead of the vast areas of space where they can PVP without interference from the unloved NPCs?

The reason that there are fewer and fewer targets in low, null and WH space is that highsec is so safe. Players come back to high to make their money pursuing incursions and other PvE, as well as industry in near perfect safety thus limiting targets elsewhere. In short the risk vs. reward is too skewed making highsec the obvious place to earn your ISK.

To fix this either the rewards of highsec need to be reduced, or, the risk increased. One of the motivations of the New Order, and some of the other more altruistic highsec PvP groups is to provide that risk that was originally intended by the game designers. Highsec was not intended to be, and is not "safe space" and therefore there should be mechanisms to facilitate PvP there, albeit with some restrictions to make it less of a free-for-all than the other spaces. Otherwise, players will hide there from the rest of the sandbox in complete safety and you will never get a non-consensual fight anywhere in New Eden ever again.

Now as to this proposal, I am not sure it does much to change the risk vs. reward calculation of highsec, but it might improve the "criminal minigame" between highsec criminals (i.e. gankers) and those that want to stop them. Certainly there is room for improvement as criminals are limited to small ships by the faction police, and thus unable to give "good fights" as many aggrieved parties demand after being liberated from their space pixels. I am not sure this will change much, as it least in my experience the ride down from 0 to -10 goes fast for a career criminal in this game, so the window where players can provide the justice rather than NPCs would be small. Still, it couldn't hurt to give players more opportunity to enforce the safety they crave.

This is in large part correct, but this is intended by CCP. You are suppose to be at risk if you don't spend effort or time to defend yourself - that is what makes the game interesting. However, defenders do not need large fleets to defend their haulers - a single scouting and webbing escort can check any potential risky systems and spirit away your freighter in seconds even if you miss a bumper before you jump. Your "victory condition" is not defeating the gankers in honourable combat, just getting your goods safely to their destination so if the gankers are active in a system, just go around or wait until they are done for the day. Avoiding gankers is nearly 100% achievable if you spend the effort, or if you must plow through go with full tank and a handful of logi or perhaps ECM, although if you have that webber, you probably aren't going to need them.

The problem is if you actually want to interfere with the gankers attacking someone that isn't you. As BeBop said, gankers are forced to hide in stations and can strike quickly, at a target that the anti-gankers cannot be sure of. Interfering with the gankers ganking any target cannot be done reliably, and can be quite boring as timers are being waited out thus limiting the anti-ganker/ganker battles. These are the problems the proposal seeks to address.

Gankers function like this because the mechanics force them to. The faction police make it impossible for me to fight someone in a duel for instance, or a wardec, even if I want to. "Hiding" from wardecs also isn't a thing, at least for -10 gankers, as they are already free to shoot to everyone so there is no point to even bother to wardec them.

I am sure that removing the criminal timer and the faction police would result in more "good fights" with gankers as they would be able to re-ship to a bigger PvP boat if they got a limited time engagement with an anti-ganker, and would not have to spend 15 minutes hiding out in a station after each gank so there would be more opportunity for conflict. However, I am not sure that this significant decrease in general safety would be tolerated by the general highsec population just so gankers and anti-gankers could have "good fights" with each other.

Personally, I have no problem with gankers being limited to small, rapid attacks like a thug in a dark alley, rather than participating in a grand space battle with those that oppose them, but I do see how this can be frustrating for the anti-gankers. Like a beat cop in a crime-ridden city, they are doomed to being unable to prevent most of the crime and have only small victories against the low-level bad guys. But Eve is a dark, dystopian universe so such realities makes sense.

Of course they make sense, but then please stop picturing it as if anti-gankers could do anything about the ganks. As things stand, they are incapable of doing so. As defender, you can only avoid the ganks by webbing and scouting and cloaky-MWD mechanics and in general be not a moron, as you said; but fighting against them is futile. Removing faction police from the equation is only going to make matters worse for the defenders/haulers/people in High sec in general, as they are the only thing that keeps gankers from becoming all too prevalent and turning High sec into a kind of Low sec without the danger for the gankers of being dropped/countered by other people.
Instead, ganking should be kept an unpleasant and lengthy waiting game thing as it is and more people should be forced encouraged to go to Low sec. This goes a long way with the OP's false assumption that you have to pay a lot of ISK for the tags. You, instead, should be looking for the Clone Soldier spawns and find the tags yourself and by that expose yourself to PVP. Why not many people do it? Because people want easy, risk-free PVP.

Shortening timers is also not going to help anyone against ganking, but only helps the gankers to gank more. The OP mentioned that he has also presented his idea to "white knights"; I'd like to see a couple of them post here to see what they think.

I've heard the can't dock suggestion before, and have to admit, I'm not a fan. On the other hand the elimination of facpo would make it far more palatable. I'm honestly not sure what I think of this. I should mention though. My goal with this was to be a very simple change that worked off of existing mechanics only. Eliminating faction police, or adding in docking restrictions I would hope would be part of a much more comprehensive set of changes to security status that hopefully would include additional methods of interaction between players. I would prefer something more similar to my original post as a more immediate fix, and further iteration later on.

Got a link to the thread? I'd rather not discuss this here.