Crime & Punishment

Thank you for your kind words. Although I somehow doubt they were written sincerely I will take them at face value nonetheless. You see, I'm not as proficient in english as you apparantly are so I failed to convey the subtext.

I have no Idea why you would consider me to be somewhat dsitantly in time or space. But be that as it may. I did not listen to any soundcloud ever. You see. I was born in the last century when readin was still a thing. If I want to know something, I look it up.

I did certainly not jump any bandwagons. I was simply trying to express my thoughts. According to my obesrvations most of the bêtes noires of Eve claim to have no emotional or psycologiocal deficit.Quite on the contrary they usually claim the wish to save carebears from the dull shooting of red crosses or asteroids and lead the to the eternal light of player driven content called PvP- If this is the case, then why oh why do the selfsame people spend so much time and effort to make sure they run no risk while doing so? Because they don't want to lose as you point out. So why is this kind of risk aversion, or risk management as you prefer to call it, good, and the the other kind of risk management - switching off friendly fire - bad and the doom of Eve??? Your likeminded friend explained she would rather not participate any fight she could not cheat in, because she fears she might lose. That's your definition of risk aversion, isn't it?

I also thought the religion of eve would be the risk/reward ratio. So why do you wish to claim the biggest reward without daring to risk anything in return? That's what strikes me as odd.

Further I didn't call her a coward. I merely pointed out that there seems to be little difference in the mindset of risk aversive carebears and risk managing hardcore pvpers.

Then I would like to come back to your comparison of awoxing and participants in a contest who do whatever the rules permit in order to trash their opponents. This is not a viable analogy. Awoxing is not a contest. There are opponents. The whole idea behind awoxing is that the other party does not expect to be attacked. You might compare this to a situation where one team on the field is playing soccer and tries to score a goal below the crossbar whereas the other team secretly changed the ball, the goalposts and the rules and is playing american football with the aim to shoot over the crossbar. How can you claim to win when you are not participating in the same sport?

I hope I could further explain my confusion with these hardcore pvpers who somehow fail to adapt and HTFU.

Killing people who don't want to engage in PvP at all in the highest security area of the game should be one of the most difficult activities in the game. It is still very viable in a number of ways including suspect baiting, which I would argue is neither prohibitively difficult nor absurdly expensive as some of the most effective ships for this endeavor are quite cheap, and the number of idiots in highsec remains entirely too high.

Mo, I contest your assertion that most baiters don't rely on alts and in fact believe that one of the reasons folks such as myself who dabble in solo flashy mischief from time to time have such trouble even getting engagements is that most players are rightfully wary of having neutral logi, DPS, and ship swapping orcas dropped on their head should they aggress.

I'm indifferent on the subject of AWOXing; it never affected me one way or another. Corps falling victim to it was assuredly the fault of unqualified leaders, but those are not going away and I agree it was unfair and bad for the game to have new and casual players being slaughtered by T3's on safari due to CEOs who were clueless.

The people who think that they should be able to live in highsec and rack up a dozen kills a day in a bling fit neutral guard supported gank proteus, are an entitled group of carebears. There are plenty of people, myself included, who have put up ridiculous killmails via suspect baiting. Vimsy's Gnosis baiting alt circus in Nourv is still going strong. CODE kills billions of ISK worth of stupid in pipe systems. Highsec pvp is very vibrant and viable. It is still too easy in some respects. HTFU.

The people who aren't willing to go out and discover the game and experience different kinds of content available in EVE during their first weeks are going to fall into two categories.

Either they are the sort who will be perfectly content to remain in highsec for years whilst leveling their Raven and doing everything they can to avoid PvP, or they will simply lack the mindset to enjoy the game at all. Being blown up 5 days in by a bittervet griefer will probably not change those outcomes.

I was derping into lowsec in unrigged frigates and destroyers within two weeks, savoring the thrill of running back to highsec as fast as I could when something called an Omen landed at the belt and started shooting at me. I was exploring cautiously, reading chat channels and EVE related articles and asking questions. I was learning. It's not that hard. I don't buy the notion that highsec seal farming is the key to new player retention.

I knew from day one that there was more to EVE than the little yellow frigates sitting in belts. I also knew that a certain minimum level of SP and ISK income would be required to experience the game as I wished, and I set about making that happen.

New player retention is best served by vets working to interact with new players in a constructive fashion. Taking a conciliatory and informative approach after you've exploded someone's ship can be helpful, but it seems like a great many are more interested in harvesting salty chat logs. Newly rolled alts taking advantage of their time in rookie chat or NPC alts shaking up corp chat are two (I think) great possibilities. But we've got a bunch of guys who just want to harvest ragemails and teary chat logs and then expect CCP to take responsibility for attracting new players. The claims of "it's not my responsibility to get people engaged" which I have heard here multiple times, will ring hollow when there's naught left but bittervets, alts, and a few mangy Fedos.

I've spent my last few days in the largest growing corp in eve helping the new players get a taste of the game. The biggest threat faced here is not the mystical t3 blob supported by neutral logi it is weaponized boredom being utilized against newbies. They have plenty of time to learn about the crappier aspects of the game they don't need that. The most fun they have is when war targets come to the island in ships they have a chance of killing

Well the fact they have to come through some of the worst lowsec in game to get here the ships tend to be cheapish and small. So T3's haven't been a factor much. Stratios have seen a lot of use though and they are a bit of a morale breaker as they are mostly uncatchable when done right. That being said I baited one of them the other night using a not that newbro and 8-10 newbros in fleet in an assortment of frigates and destroyers while I backed them up in a Gila. Bait was taken and 8-10 newbros went screaming through a gate and landing tackle in the most ragtag assortment of ships and fits one will ever see and brought down the beast just before the bait died (20% structure). The total value of Stratios (and pod) was 1bil isk and each got a 23.5mil payout which for most was as much as 10 times their current isk. That kill saw 5 people rush off the the account management page to sub. This is happening daily with as many as 300 (possibly more) completely new first time players in the corp. Wardecs and PvP coming to new players is good for them. But remember as with all forms of fishing don't overfish or it dries up and if they get hell camped for simply existing those undecideds will likely leave. Balance is needed and judgement on when to let them live.

PS Mo if you like fighting larger fleets bring 1 of your kitey asb ships out here I'm sure I can rustle up 10-20 newbies in frigates-cruisers to come and fight you

Just .5 cents from a very risk averse, former null bear/current hi sec wanderer who can actually count himself among Vimsey's victims in his Arnon days when he was part of OOPS (should have checked local)...

Let this be food for thought and take it however you wish, regardless of your perspective: Upon showing EvE once to a coworker who had no clue what EvE was even about and knew nothing whatsoever except what I had talked about casually at work, he watches me undock and see's someone else sitting idle nearby.

His first question, "Can you shoot that guy?"

Me: "Well, its High sec so no, unless he does certain stuff or I do certain stuff blah blah blah..."

Him: "So you can't shoot him? Wtf that's boring. Whats the point?"

Me: *silence*

I had no response. How do you explain the appeal of flying around in an armed to the teeth bling boat that's fun to look at but never intending to do anything other than look at your ship and marvel at how pretty it is? Its hard to get someone excited about that. Its like owning a Ferrari and only driving 55 mph on the autobahn. I mean that's certainly an option, but its gonna get boring VERY quickly. I've been around long enough to know how to break the monotony with alts that do non hi sec related activities. But try to explain that to new guys who think EvE looks cool enough to investigate further only to find out there's all these complicated rules governing aggression and fighting depending on where you are in space.

Whereas, lets say some guy blows you the fudge up a few days in. The kind of person that's gonna succeed in EvE is the kinda guy that says "Wtf? I'm gonna remember your name and come after you one day, *expletive expletive expletive*!"

+1

I've posted a dozen posts trying to say this.

All I ever seem to say is "I make noobs cry" which isn't even true.

Good job summarizing what many can no longer see.

We need casual and small scale fighting in highsec in order to grab the interest of new players.

I do what I like. As soon as your way of doing things gets in my way, well, I'm a terrible PvP'er and I stick to NPC corps for the most part. So I'll just find somewhere else to live. Its not that hard.

The verdict is in.