Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This thread has been moved to Features & Ideas Discussion.

Put some spaces between the lines... it is pretty diffecult to read

I personally would love to see faction ships take over the role of concord in lower security space. In .5 concord could still come but have a bit more of a delay, meanwhile faction ships would show up in their place. A tankable avoidable force for a little while. In .5 this would still mean attackers get wrecked by concord but it would also mean they have a longer time to gank or whatever other illegal activity they are performing. Meanwhile .4 security space would lack concord but still allow for faction police to protect or assist assaulted entities.

Unlike concord however their response could be based via the victims standings with the empire in question. Further since these ships are not actually required to assist they could just bug out if they see there is no way to defend. Also because they act like normal NPCs they are tankable and killable unlike concord.

This would give the average carebear a little more incentive to try low sec as it provides a little extra defense for them, however it would not be anywhere near enough to prevent coordinated attacks or a smart attacker. Also unlike with concord players could legally avoid these groups and get away without losing their ship and even if their ship was lost they could still retain insurance payouts on ships lost this way.

It's not something that should be done without testing, but the only way to test would be to put in on active servers. It could be played off as empires trying desperately to gain a grasp on their lower security systems and explained in lore similar to how FW was with the war powers militia act. Upon seeing if it invigorates LS or does nothing CCP could make the option to pull the feature similar to how they did with industry teams.

Either way this change could be interesting to have implemented. Even more so if they use some of hte new AI on faction NPC's to allow for fleets and hunting of targets. It could also further the rift lore wise between the empires and capsuleer groups.

Ganking as an activity has both increased and decreased at the same time.

As far as the number of incidents go... yes... it has increased.

However, with regards to the number of ganks per population sample... the number has gone down.


This can be most easily explained by an increase in the overall player population/activity within the game. More players equals more potential targets... but only so many of those players are actually ganked (see: the player population/activity is increasing faster than the gankers can kill them).

Another thing to consider is that with more (and active) players, more people will actually see ganks happening. This fuels a perception that "ganking is out of control" when the case is merely that more people saw ONE gank attempt happen than more actual ganks.
Example: in real life... the US population perceives that "violent crime is out of control" when, in fact, all statistics say that violent crime has been decreasing substantially over the last decade. Part of this is due to the fact that people are more aware than before and there is more coverage in the media of what incidents that do occur.
This becomes a self-reinforcing loop that doesn't stop and lowers peoples' threshold for what they are willing to tolerate and/or accept.


If you were to go back in time... ganking used to be FAR, FAR easier than it is now.
How was it easier?
- CONCORD response used to be double what it is today
- CONCORD used to be tankable (see: the MoO corporation, their siege of a tradehub, and subsequent direct intervention from the DEVs).
- players could gank and warp to another target before CONCORD responded... allowing them to perform one last gank attempt before dying (see: the "boomerang" tactic)
- ships used to have ~50% less hitpoints than they do today
- the Procurer and Skiff did not have the massive amount of HP it has now
- increases in security standing hits for "illegal acts of aggression"
- the "safety action" button
- very few haulers and industrial people knew the "webbing-warp" trick
- Bastion Mode did not exist
- gankers could get insurance for any ship they used to suicide gank (effectively making the cost of ganking more negligible than it is today... even when compared to the current cost of using only Catalysts)

That last point is probably the biggest one. I remember suicide ganking in Tech 1-fit Battleships for giggles and it used to be economically sound (sort of).
Even with the introduction of Attack Battlecruisers and the major buffs to Destroyers (which were introduced around the same time at the insurance nerf) the cost of ganking dramatically went up... because gankers had to eat the full cost of their activities (regardless of success or not).


But now I am digressing.



Indeed. The difference in "safety" was never intentional. It just sort of happened as a side effect of the gradual increases in high-sec "safety."

As far as "adding" content (warning; generalizations ahead)...

- players who seek safety will go where they feel safe. A "sort of safe" zone (which is what High-sec was originally) will not appeal to them... regardless of the rewards that they could potentially get.

- players who hunt other players will go where the previously mentioned group will go... regardless of the "security rating" of the system. They merely find ways to get around or "beat" the "rules."

- players who enjoy a more open environment will stay where the rules are lax. Mechanical "safety" is not really a concern as they already know how to keep themselves safe and reap the rewards of their location (otherwise they would not be there).


This places any "in-between" area in terms of security and reward in a bad place. Not enough security for one group... to much for another... and another group doesn't care, they will just go where targets are and adapt.

I like this idea.

I don't know how this approach escaped me but I love the idea of modifying BOTH .5 to make it less secure and .4 to make it more secure.
Seems like a pretty obvious and intuitive way to close the gap.

I think we cannot do it for 0.4, as this systems recently where allowed to put there some additional pos stuff , like moon mining , and reactions?

Still 0.5 and 0.6 are all around supply lines.
So in order to not kill eve industry by this move , CCP would have to shift some of those systems to 0.7 or introduce stationary Concord ships on gates.

Someone could still bump you , but i guess it is your job to provide yourself a webbing ship or use proper ship to transport goods.

Most definitely, but you still need to do your homework if you're not just passing through. And by that I mean get your ass into a quick T1 frigate and get all your tacticals in place, get to know the locals, how and where they operate and then graduate up to the bigger ships (if you want to, I use HACs/Fast navy ships in low) - feels like they were made for life there.

Also: Speed is life .

Yup.

Also to be fair, low seems a lot less camped than it used to be. Time was you couldn't go through major chokes with out a 20-something man camp. Nowadays that happens more like once a month. The reputation remains however, which is an shame.

What's most telling to me are the guys running BRs and DSTs for smallish stuff into null when they can't wait on the JF say "I breathe a sigh of relief the minute I jump into low because it's so damned safe compared to null/high".

I think this perception is completely inaccurate and to those that may make a life of highsec ganking may feel that they are having a major impact on highsec but I assure you this is nothing more than a perception. Thousands of pilots traverse highsec everyday even autopiloting and feel perfectly safe. I myself have for years repeatedly carried billions in cargo per load and on the rare occasion I hear of a major gatecamp have to make a minor course adjustment and to date have yet to be ganked. The numbers may look impressive when involved in a camp but it's purely an isolated indecent and the majority of kills are large slow vessels so the only thing making ganking impressive is the isk loss not the number of ships lost. So Myself and many others frequently choose to autopilot even through .5 systems because we know that the risk is low. Flying into .4 blind and or with valuable cargo on the other hand would be absolutely haphazard and foolhardy. When flying into any low/nulsec system one will always take virtually the same extraordinary precautionary measures as the dangers are exponentially greater be it .4 or -1.0.