Player Features and Ideas Discussion

That's ironic, considering you're asking a question with no specific answer.

My risk is a direct function of my opponent's willingness to inflict it.




Nope. Looting player wrecks is separate, and governed by the loot fairy.




Nope, it can't be equally applied. Our side is actually playing the game, your side wants it changed in their favor so they don't have to.

There is no moral equivalency here.

And that is evasive as you still haven't even remotely attempted to quantify the risk. Let's take an exmple, you as the ganker will have what? A few 10's of mil isk at risk in the gank (minimal risk at that). The freighter pilot will have 1 bil+ ISK at risk just in the hull. This is where most people have a problem with the risk reward balance. Beyond the immediate destruction of a few cheap ships there is no other risk the hauler/indy players can inflict upon you as a ganker, you aren't even in player corps that an be wardec'd more often than not. The short term damage the victim's can inflict is very minimal and there simply is no long term risk they can inflict upon the ganker.


May as well say that people don't run combat anoms for profit since they are governed by the loot fairy, and you neatly sidestep the point that the simple destruction of the mining barges (or frieghters etc) to feed sales of more barges is the generation of income in itself.





EvE was always intended to include players building stuff to feed the economy alongside players destroying stuff to create demand. Both are playing the game equally and a balance is required. Also I am not on either side and as far as players of this game there is no 'them' and 'us' beyong IGS and roleplaying. We are all in the same game.

First, let's start with the reward - there is practically none. Well, none worth mentioning. Miner ganking is unprofitable: you might make 3-5M ISK per gank if you loot your own wreck, but factoring in the occasional loss to white knights, traps, disconnects and miscalculations you are lucky to break even. For haulers it is better, but either you are either choosey and spend a lot of time waiting around, or gank everything and make much less per gank so as a continual activity it makes less, usually much less ISK/h than L4 missioning.

The few professional freighter gank squads are profitable, but by the time you spread the profits out to everyone they are still making less than they could doing PvE with even moderate skills.

As for risk, it is impossible to quantify. Mechanically, -10 gankers are at extreme risk as they are free targets to everyone and have constant NPCs chasing them, but practically they know this and minimize their exposure to these risk. But they are very susceptible to interference by other players and this is where the risk is suppose to come from. Like say market trading, another pure PvP activity, the risk is enforced by the other players actions. Traders have access to a huge potential reward and are at risk only to what other traders do to then. Ganking it is the same, only without the huge reward.

Risk vs. reward is an important concept when you are talking about adding resources to the economy. It is irrelevant when dealing with PvP activities like scamming, ganking, and trading where the entire risk vs. reward balance is determined by other players. I don't even know how CCP could even start with the balancing of risk vs. reward for ganking. Make shuttles with PLEX have more EHP? The reward is completely determined by other players' choices and the risk to failing is as well (except for that damn loot fairy).

Ganking is in the game in purpose to serve as a risk to players living in highsec. It provides an discouragement to bling and pure-yield fits for everyone: missioners, miners, haulers and even the associates of gankers such as bumpers and scouts. Think of it as a button that any player can press to sacrifice their ship for a chance at the contents of another players' stuff. That makes the game way more interesting than the full-cargo and yield fits that everyone would fly without that risk and that is why CCP has put and kept suicide ganking into the game.

Okay, now I know you're just trolling.

I said exactly what Pedro said, that the ganker's risk is completely determined by other players. And yet you kept right on pounding the pedantic nonsense at me, blathering on about how I didn't answer your attempted loaded question.

Pathetic.

I did so repeatedly.





If they want that, they shouldn't be flying specifically non combat ships.

Freighters are a prey animal, they should behave accordingly. Fortunately, unlike nature, this is a video game, and you can just decide to stop being a prey animal and play something dynamic if you want to.

The numbers, or at least the potential maximum numbers, are all public thanks to killboards. Just pick your favourite ganker and check out their killboard for a day and see how much they are making. For freighter squads factor in an additional 5-10 support characters looting, bumping and scouting to the number you see on the kill mails.

Also, you can poke around the forums as this has been asked several times before. There are some numbers from BeBop or this GD thread.

You are correct that there are reasons to gank other than the loot drop. Sometimes you are just in the wrong place the wrong time. CCP Falcon has made it clear that this is by design.

Also haulers/miners should remember that they aren't singled out here. It is a false dichotomy to paint the issue as gankers vs. industrialists. Most gankers have hauler, industrial, or even missioning alts or mains, and have to take the same precautions and are exposed to the same risk of ganking as everyone else. In fact, maybe moreso as since I have seen so much ganking (from the ganking side of course) I often waste time taking what are likely statistically unnecessary precautions to protect myself from ganks. There really aren't that many gankers left out there anymore so unless you are doing something risky (mining in a hulk, AFKing a freighter through Niarja/Uedama, etc.), your chances of being ganked are near zero.

indeed.

was replying to corraidhin's desire to have engaging gameplay to deal retribution to gankers.

However, if you do take anything from my second post, it should be to be to not blindly try to nerf ganking. Half the time you'll end up nerfing yourselves and others trying to use said mechanic for 'honorable' gameplay reasons. This is not good gameplay, nor fun, nor fair.

You could perhaps make fleet hangars only work for cargo hold-to-cargo hold transfers. That may be simple to code and requires the shuttle not only loot first, but have the loot in its hold where it can be ganked. However, this is still a nerf to all fleet hangars ever, and it really wont take much for gankers to just use jet-cans.

This is basically a thread asking for work to be done for a non-plus result.


As for ganking bow heads/orcas/whatever, that depends on the loot and the willingness and capabilities of the gankers. Ive read plenty of threads, including the bowheads introduction thread, that have endless whining about how easy ganking is and how vulnerable such ships are.

The bow head even had its tank increased because of such crying... hows that working for the bears now?

*cough* hyperdunking *cough*

That's why I always try to propose ways to expand gameplay somehow rather than nerf things, the ganker/anti-ganker interactions sounds like it used to be much better and I'm assuming the same anti-ganking tactics (webbers etc) still worked just the same?

Putting gankers in NPC corps won't do a thing as they are already usually -10 and effectively in a one-sided wardec with every other player in Eve. You could somehow try to put the support alts in a wardeccable player corp, but for scouting I pretty much always use now a cloaky ship for a warp-in that never uncloaks, and the looter already goes suspect making a wardec unnecessary. Only perhaps a scanner (and bumper in the case of freighters) would be vulnerable to a war, but even then they would just use the same drop-reform mechanic that is currently used (abused?) routinely by carebears to shed the wardec making the whole exercise moot.

You can already hunt gankers - lay some bait, camp gates that they use, or show up in an ECM ship after they have started the gank. Gankers in NPC corps isn't the problem as wardecs aren't going to give you any more recourse against them then the current mechanics already do.



The emergent gameplay that has evolved from the current rules makes it trivial to avoid gankers - not overfitting/overloading, tanking, scouting, webbing and instadocks/undocks remove 99.999% of the risk of a gank. The rules are so strict that pretty much anyone can either make themselves an unprofitable target, avoid staying in one place long enough to be caught, or hold out for ~20s against a destroyer until CONCORD arrives to save them. Protecting yourself is easy.

You can also easily interfere with gankers attacking someone else like the Anti-Ganker community tries. This is simple if you know where the gankers are going to strike next. Having fast-locking ships, ECM, logi, and/or smartbombs waiting for them will ruin the gankers day. Players regularly do this with some success.

However, you cannot protect everyone. Gankers will change tactics and strike somewhere you are not expecting and/or protecting. You are not easily able to shut them down completely because they can always move and the tedium of keeping up a constant vigil, just to protect ungrateful AFK miners and haulers, will get to you.

All of this seems to me fine gameplay. Players that spend the time/effort to protect their assets are immune to gankers. Players that want to play the role of the white knight and protect other AFK players can as the gankers offer themselves up as targets to shoot. However, unless the white knights pull together a huge force, they are unable to completely shut down the gameplay of the ganker and the cycle of destruction continues.

I am sure there is room for improvement that could make the conflict between the gankers and anti-gankers more engaging but unless you loosen the NPC-enforced restrictions on the gankers, there will be little opportunity for escalation and players will continue to whine on the forums that the gankers don't risk enough. Wardecs against gankers aren't going to make a difference to this, in fact, most gankers are already in corps (like me) or alliances (like CODE. or Goonswarm) already as there is no additional risk to a -10 ganker from wardecs.

And the fact of the matter is that, when you look at killboards, freighters dying is exceedingly rare.