Crime & Punishment

I don't really see much crying here so much as the pointing out of the failure of a measure that was intended to do a thing in doing that thing.
It didn't work, and now a thing that was very much EVE and EVE alone has been made to suffer in vain.
AWOX'es still will happen, but the age of the safari has been nearly made extinct.

But then even that blog post states it, the number of people it's affected is minimal. Whether it's had much of an effect or not (hard to tell considering it being summer and there being a sov overhaul, both of which affects subs significantly) is mostly irrelevant. It was a pretty weird thing to have in place anyway. It was good back before there were ways to initiate legal combat, so people in corps could practice fights, but since dueling became a thing, it's solely been there for mind-numbingly easy awoxing. I like that people have to put a little bit of effort in now. I was always one for "STEAL EVERYTHING!" rather than "shoot orca - run away giggling" anyway.

You forgot the part about the graveyard of dead MMOs who also tried to cheapen and cazualize their core gameplay.

i dont think people know what they want when they come to eve, they find out what they want when they start playing, which the npe will influence that descision, unless you come to pvp then they are given no real help into getting that, basically thrown to the curb and told to read and get over it.

The elitist idea that we shouldn't club defenseless new players is killing this game.

If you haven't looked, check out the charts on the posted pages. The game is dying.

The crackdown on EULA violations started about a year before the new crimewatch rules hit. It lines up with the charts that show the decline of the game. My friends mostly quit before the crimewatch even went into effect...

In 2011 you could get a fight in Akiainavas (noob system) anytime you wanted. If you were a new player there, you could watch fights, take fights, or participate as you saw fit.

There were frequently multiple baiters outside station with whom you could play. Some were noobs, some were barely able to beat noobs, and some were very skilled. The local chat was full of arguments, smack talk, etc...

Ultimately, it was mean, it was funny, it was stupid... But it was content.

Whether you logged off happy or mad, you were entertained.

Baiting is now dead. Akiainavas is now silent. Local chat is empty and there is nothing but ships going about their mission activities in perfect solitude. New players don't log in and encounter fights, wrecked ships, chaos, and smack talk.

They encounter only repetitive low-quality NPC content.

We aren't retaining new players because we're preventing them from experiencing the brutality that made Eve great.

The elitist attitude that only inferior players and bad people kill noobs is destroying the noob experience. That's why retention is going down.

Our noobs are neither happy nor angry when they log out. Evidence suggests they're not even interested.

If they would just roll pvp and baiting mechanics back to 2011 and let us fight in noob systems this whole thing could turn around.


I think CCP is going to go down in a big feel-good nerf cycle.

I'm about to add my name to the un-subs once again. The current war dec mechanics are a shadow of what they once were. I miss baiting and I'm bored. I think our noobs are too.

No. My stuff goes with my account.

I still hold onto the hope that CCP will wake up before the game dies.


As for your statement about fighting vets... It's not accurate. Any fighting in a noob system without a war dec is petition able.

The last time I got petitioned there I was baiting against a guy in a scorpion. He undocked in a kestrel and I killed it in what I expected to be a fight. When I saw it was unfit, I figured it was a petition gank.

Without noobs for cannon fodder, there are no new pvpers or vets. Baiting is dead... And a substantial quantity of entertainment and content went with it.

Back when the subscriber count was climbing, the game was really hard. They gave you a kestrel and told you to kill Gallente. There were baiters everywhere trying to steal your stuff and kill you.

When I was new I hated those guys. I felt like they were just jerks. However, over time I came to understand that the game needs bad guys. They make you mad, but they're necessary. Without them, there is no compelling storyline...

Eve has become easy... And easy games aren't compelling or fun.

You can't see the big picture through your certainty. No, I'm not excited about killing noobs.

Your rhetoric( and its equivalent) will kill this game.

I hope someone at CCP learns to see through it.

You realize that people don't play the game to retain newbies, right? It is not the responsibility of players to stage fleet fights at our own expense just to entertain new players.

Combat in highsec should be an organic thing that happens as a result of normal gameplay, not something staged pretend event for the entrainment of newbies.

When newbies see people fighting in highsec it's entirely common for them to ask what the heck is going on and why all those people are shooting each other. "It's actually just a pretend battle we're putting on as a show" is not a good answer.

I'm never going to fabricate a lie to tell to newbies to trick them 8nto thinking the game is more interesting than it is. Also you can't annoy people in or around new player systems, they ban you for that.

You're also making a huge error in assuming that new players are the targets of any kind of highsec aggression. Generally speaking they aren't. In the case of awoxing for example new players were never the target of that, they frankly don't have assets that are worth targeting, the targets have always been high value assets like bling fit pve ships, orcaS, freighters and other ships worth ransoming or blowing up for loot. The same is true for wars, new players are not the people who flag as potential targets, new players fly stupid little crap that's both difficult to catch and basically worthless, you spend more money on locates trying to figure out where they are than you get in kills. The people who stand out are.the ones who've been in highsec a long time and have a history of losing things without the slightest attempt at self defense.

Targeting new players does not result in war reports with an entire mining fleet complete with orca on them, or dead marauders, or undefended towers and POCOs.

It's not newbies who are willfully defenseless, in fact newbies are quite often excited by the prospect of fighting someone (I know I was, in fact being wardecced for no less than 16 consecutive weeks is why I still play the game). The people who flip that friendly fire switch to illegal are people who have things in highsec they are afraid to lose and who don't care or trust enough to try and keep them.

No, they don't. They will literally warn/ban you for being suspect flagged in a rookie system if anyone petitions you. regardless of whether or not you even shoot at anyone.

The whole issue came up ages ago when Arnon was declared a rookie system because it's near by to fairly active lowsec, is a minor market hub, has many large ore belts and has non-rookie agents in system. Initially CCP stated that you could do pretty much whatever so long as you didn't target "rookies" and then people started getting bans and warnings for blowing up hulks and tengus. People then asked what the hell a rookie was, the GMs then basically lost their ****, told everyone not to try and game the rules and "there are other ways to kill people so don't be suspect flagged!!" Since then they've essentially been enforcing zero tolerance and also extending it to duels and suicide ganking.

You're welcome to go try it, I'll pass though.