EVE General Discussion

Ahem.

No mention of any modules aside from T1 guns.

The Vexor is a T1 cruiser, the fit I provided has T1 guns fitted and is used for PvE, ergo it meets the criteria specified.

You're the one that made the claim that a gank destroyer has the same DPS as a battleship, I disagreed and have backed up my claim to them having a little more than a T1 cruiser with a PvE fit.

Your move.

HS is crucial to the game in a number of ways. From incubating new players, to providing the field for risk-averse players who nonetheless crucially also fuel the economy in terms of resources aquired and purchased, a space for subsidising action of other sector players on alts, a reasonably safe and stable network of market hubs and competitive exchange economically.

I see these concerns with HS:

1) Ganking:
Is too technically convoluted, involved and specialised for me to comment on specifically. Reason for that is its essentially bypassing existing rules, in a fashion held acceptable, with an unclear boundary except set by precedent and sporadic CCP reaction to exceptionally gross bending of rules. I hold with the principle that risk should occur there too, and is dependant on content created by players. It is crucial to EVE ethos, that also superbling ships and diamond haulers in HS have to deal with the core risk of player aggression. Losing this is unthinkable, and detracts from the game in ways that inherently reduce the core features that make EVE so very unique and unusual in todays gaming market. CCP has been, imo, very good at walking the line in this, and its an enormous credit to them.

Having said that, if it becomes apparent HS ganking (in any one of its ingenius forms) becomes too profitable in conparison to risk/expense, then yes, it needs addressing. I have full confidence CCP will recognize that and act accordingly then, as I do in the HS ganking community also accepting that, adaptubg and running with it, keeping close to their thoughts that they understand some balance is necessary for the game overall, no matter how far they can push the limits.

It should never, ever, be safe to fly a multibillion ship in modules or cargo, anywhere in EVE.

2) HS exploration/missioning/incursions:
HS exploration profit of data/relic sites was nerfed through a number of commensurate changes. I applaud this, because when properly fitted, covops capable exploration vessels are inherently very safe throughout all space. Most new players acknowledge this, and "practice" in HS before moving out to other sectors, which is a direction that is altogether excellent for the community overall. Exploration to my mind has been a huge success for funneling players out of HS into WH/null (and LS, butbto a lesser degree,nwhich is a LS thread purpose and too large to expand on here). Weirdly, combat exploration has remained almost as profitable throughout. Im not sure what to pin this on, but I suspect its due to the sustained desirability/consumption of the drops in Pve and pvp markets, as well as the reluctance of many HS explorers to try pve sites. They prefer the data/relic site hacking minigame, to shooting NPCs for a far more lucrative reward, possibly because HS combat sigs also require more skilling (and obciously a very low, but ecistant, risk of ship destruction if you dont know what you are doing). The rate of Combat Sig spawn is probably integral to this too, and apparently at the sweet spot. Someone mentioned frequency of 5/10 escalation spawns from anoms, and how they also now are always in HS. Im divided on this, but agree they are perhaps too frequent atm, and too safe as HS spawns.

Missioning is imo still too lucrative in HS, at too little risk. I applaud gank efforts to curtail this. Im unsure how to tackle this, as missioning inherently combines so many profit benefits ranging from bounty->loot->salvage>LP->mission isk reward. Agent dispersal is systemic and id rather not engage that. Mission parameters, interms of blitzing, are also anhuge can of worms id rather not bother with. Profits should be reduced, someway, somehow. But full bling missioning ships in HS **** me off to no end. Its just wrong. There should be incidental, but serious, intervention in this kind of irresponsible fitting/piloting.

Incursions have, to an extent, saturated their own market. Logistics of joining a fleet in terms of RL time and skills/fit are escalating accordingly. Considering the specifics of running an incursion, I appreciate the essentially pve and noncombative compensation in profits, but I wohld like to see more opportunity for competition between incursion fleets, ESPECIALLY in pvp potentially, in incursion systems. We already have systemwide negatives applied by the incursion. I think there is a real potential here to open up HS pvp in incursion systems between fleets and incidental aggressors, by modifying CONCORD intervention. The precedent is there. CCP just needs to develop the balls to introduce pvp risk to incursion systems.

3)HS Industry/trading:
The most difficult to address of all the above. Last years industry changes helped, but not in the way I would have preferred. The choice then was to incentivize NS industry with bonuses, and ease transit of material to and from HS to NS, and vice versa.. Personally I would have preferred reducing HS industry efficiency, and resitricted material transport, to the end of incentivizing NS local productiin and resource sourcing, as opposed to improving NS refinement/reprocessing, to cross sourcing them from HS markets which are inherently completely a different animal to NS ones.

Industry changes in HS are compensated by the plethora of enormous interconnected competitive markets, huge presence of resource providers and the overall security of sourcing, production and transportation of those. The sum total of these is almost insurmountable in terms of changing the favored areas of production and material sourcing.

HS could be potentially superficially nerfed, but I think the extent that would require would have to be so extreme (considering the sheer qmount of resource/industry production in HS and the massively populated markets) that it would ruin the game.

Instead, I prefer curtailing and limiting safe transit of material to and from HS, so as to insulate these two areas of productiin from each other.

The better questions is: how can high-sec go away? It seems as if it is as unchanging as the stars and the universe itself.

I disagree and I think it is a matter of opinion. One can see it as being a different game next to another game within a greater sandbox, just like DUST is a game of its own. And I believe this is the case for some players. Not everyone sees it the same way, nor will CCP. It is rather open to interpretation.

Strictly speaking, high-sec seems to me like if it is a very old game mechanic and in desperate need of a great overhaul. New player entry locations should not be fixed locations in a fixed and artificially secured space, where the new players then become a member of some meaningless NPC corporation. Rather should the new players be treated like a resource that is worth fighting over. Then, when we can take control over it, might we see new players more as actual new content and not so much as "stupid, dumb and annoying noobs with a tendency to cause drama". Instead, you want to give new players a purpose and being a part of something bigger instantly. The game's trailers do make it look like it was an instant experience, but the reality is that there is a huge learning curve at first and with mostly only noobs and risk-averse players in high-sec does one quickly feel lost instead of being a part of the great, awesome experience that the game can be and which the trailers portray.

At least I have not yet seen a trailer that showed how 8 hours of mining and mission running in high-sec can be super exciting. I hate to say it, because it will likely cause drama, but high-sec and the way it currently works stands just in the way.

Interesting chat about gank fits.

Why not take it to the proper forum. Or start a thread where it might be relevant. It has nothing to do with removing high sec.

If there was no high sec, there would be no suicide gankers. They'd all have moved to the game with the next easiest way to grief new players.

As I just logged out, there were 18k characters on line. Take a second and think what it would be if you deducted the ones in high sec. It would be a pretty empty server, wouldn't it?

Mr Epeen

Getting rid of high sec is unrealistic and would do more harm than good long term but it would be nice to see the the different empires split up more by creating boundaries of low / null sec between them. Instead of a single huge blob of empire space in the middle we would have Federation space, Republic space, State space and Empire space with their own hubs and resource distribution.

That said I can't ever see it changing after all these years.

The phrase "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose" is one of the first things a rookie learns when starting an eve account.
So keep on asking for hs income nerfs (because that's the only reason these sort of threads start out)... see how it "positively" affects risk adversity.

The reason explorers dare to venture in ls and null straight from the beginning is simple: a heron is very easy to replace and that's the only way to earn some income in that space without becoming part from the pseudo social hierarchy of the blue donut.

Oh good. Everyone will live 4 jumps from Jita and the rest of empire would look like Aridia.

Everyone asking for High-Sec removal needs to pay attention to the whining in Null and Low right now. They all say it is stagnant, not enough content, not enough players, not enough not enough not enough.

Do we really want the rest of the game to be just like THAT?!

Mostly irreconcilable, yes, but only mostly.

I actually think it would be an interesting to see what would happen if the starter systems were small islands of 1.0 in a (very shallow) sea of -0.5. In other words, you spend your first time getting to know the stuff that's taught in NPE, and your first major test is to just manage to get out of that area and into safe(r) space. That makes the players — and indeed the overall design of the game — the first and last “boss battle” you have to win in EVE, and as all boss battles, it's ultimately a question of “have you learned the systems of the game that you've been taught so far?”

Since the opposition consists of the UI other players, you get some interesting interaction points. One is that the newbie who fails can ask what he did wrong and (occasionally) get some practical tips and answers for the next attempt. Another is that we have that absolutely crucial first contact — the one that has led to so many newbies being picked up by corps who stomped them hard, but who liked the spirit they exhibited. A third is that there is no set solution: you can try to sneak out (maybe give them a n00bship-only “civilian cloak” as a reward for some NPE mission?), or just go when the population is low, or do the school (of fish) thing and overwhelm the campers with sheer numbers, or maybe scan out one of the newbie-friendly direct-to-high wormholes, or maybe pay someone to escort you… etc etc etc.

Yes, there will be newbie gankers galore — indeed, that's kind of the point — but placing it, say, one jump through null and one jump through low means that the types of players who prey on newbies in 0.9 and 1.0 systems will not go there. After all, there will be bigger fish around… and the systems themselves would still work as the same old newbie systems, where you get slapped hard if you do mess around with the players in there.

The concept teaches the mid-stages of that incubation through a one-time dose of HTFU. The systems should quite literally be a sieve, when you look at them from an outside perspective, and the new player has to take what they've learned and come up with one out of the myriad of workable plans available, and execute that using the skillz (as opposed to skills) they've picked up.

That's kind of what I'm after, but in a more structured way.

That final test to get access to the rest of the game is when the player finally says “screw this, I'm out of here”.

I still believe that some of the basics need to be taught in tutorials. It doesn't really have to be all that much — just enough to load up the ship with stuff and make it go forward — but the real trick is in exactly that social curve that EVE relies on fairly heavily. The earlier the player go down that path, the better, but it also can't be an absolutely exclusive path. It's something the player should “discover” as a handy short-cut. There are four general obstacles, and mostly cognitive ones, that I see that the NPE needs to help the new player overcome:

• It's ok to die — a lot — especially to other players. Death is just a standard problem that you have to learn to take into account work around.
• Information and communication, as you mention, are the keys to survival, not SP or bigger ships or any of the stuff that other MMOs will steer you towards.
• Other players, in turn, are the key to that information and communication, even though (indeed, especially when) they're also your opposition.
• It's actually not that hard to survive outside of the automated highsec safety net, if you just make use of these resources.

I think the “escape from the island” style of NPE would help in providing those lessons and also helps by acting as a filter, of sorts. If a new player does not enjoy that small challenge, chances are that they will never really like EVE at all — better to find out now rather than later. It also lets the player more organically discover their first favourite activity to do, which will help them give some ground to stand on and grow from as they keep playing and possibly create the first seeds of social connections.

That's why this ties in to the question of highsec's purpose and existence: many of the issues that exist with highsec exist only because so many players don't see any other option. They should be taught — demonstratively, not just in skippable text — from day 1 that there are other ways of doing things, and none of them are particularly difficult if you just read up on, or ask around for, what needs to be done. This lesson will soften an absolute ton of current “musts” about how highsec works and how it is balanced against other parts of space. Yes, lost generation, old players set in their mould, old dogs and new tricks, yadda yadda — either way, reformation of highsec has to start at the beginning, and without a solid foundation of (player) skills, connections, and even just a slice of fabricated derring-do, such change is all but impossible.

That just leaves the problem of teaching the same lessons to the old scaredy-cats.