Crime & Punishment

So.. what experience do you have with highsec warfare?

The point is that Devils did do the hard work, with the watchlist. While most other merc groups did not bother.
Even with the Watchlist hunting burned out players... Guess what making it harder will do?

Both are fair points and I respect that we all value our time.

I do think that it can be a turn off if it takes a lot of effort and time to hunt down a prey, I mean I used to love going into my stealth ship and tracking down players myself. I was however dependant on buying information, spies and email messages than the "buddy list".

If we are to discuss game mechanics rather than meta mechanics, in other words "What can CCP do inside the game itself?" rather than "What can we do in terms of real life/real time to have fun?" I do have one particular idea I would implement to make it fun for Merc again. It would still require information trading, scanning and other meta mechanic and such.

So what would I suggest instead of bringing back what was removed?

I would probably take advantage of npc standing and also corporation owned regions by having an npc in the stations, meant for bounty hunters/mercs who have a licence to be one. They would get access to an NPC who they can pay to recieve information on a players general visit within a region.

So, this can be done in many ways but to give a simplified idea. You could visit Hek and pay the NPC x5 amount of ISK to know if Razor Axe has been in the region the last hour/login/logg off. If Razor Axe logged off [Insert station] within the Metropolis Region, the npc would inform that Razor Axe is still within the region, docked (which means either logged off or docked).

If the player pays x10 amount of ISK the bounty hunter/merc will get a narrowed down search, such as "Razor Axe is in a station that is 8 jumps away". This would help narrow down the search area.

If the merc/bounty hunter has good standing or the corp owns the region so to speak, they get access to VIP service, which is A) cheaper prices mentioned above and B) the last 10 jumps/station docks for the player.

This introduces a more deduction gameplay which obviously requires you to be good at deduction (sudoku is a deduction game). You then analyze your information and narrow down your search, and jump towards where you think the target might be.

This is the same suggestion as above, only a mechanic and NPC based on. This would also ensure ISK flow out and in for Merc in terms of cost, in exchange for speeding up and simplifying the search.

Mind you, I suggest this only happens per region and that the prices vary depending on the range. And that it requires a bounty hunter/merc license being introduced which is paid monthly to keep. This is to ensure that there is a "high" cost for using the service so it doesn't become too cheap/free or even easy to hunt ANYONE. This being the main disadvantage or troll weakness in my idea. Which is easy to solve in the long run but that is the general idea I introduce to bring back the excitement and helpful tools for hunting people.

It could be like a NPC in the BAR. It fits old school lore, real life and makes sense that there are npc selling this information.

To make it a bit easier (and fair play) for the one who is running away, if they know they are being hunted. They can do the opposite by reducing the information or paying to give wrong information. So this become a game of cat and mouse in general depending on the details of the mechanic and how complex/unique it would be to give merc/bounty or information gatherers a fun game mechanic to create new meta mechanic from. I only shared idea of 50% of the mechanic, there needs to be a counter defensive mechanic, to ensure that even the one being hunted will actually enjoy being hunted and use their mind/intelligence and avoid being hunted rather than just flying away.
Thoughts?

Fair enough but the game is still a sandbox game and like most sandbox games it does require us to invent methods to play in the way we want. I don't think it is a big problem if merc/hunters see if someone is online, they would still have to track them down. But anything more than that, even what I suggested is bringing it very close to "too easy" to hunt people. Just like mining is boring for many, be it due to it's simplicity or lack of interactivity. I do think merc/hunting is the opposite, it takes perhaps too much time and energy?

Then again I do station trading and it requires a lot of time, effort and real life resources to do it on a high level. So from that perspective I am not sure which "career" is hard, easy or time consuming. It seems to me that the majority of people invested in a career will have similar opinion if their career was affected in such a way.

In light of this, it is hard to justify even my own opinion or suggestion. But I am sure with a regular conversation between hunters/merc and those who are victim, there could be a fruitful solution that benefit both parties.

Initially, my main suggestion is that it should be engaging and fun to hunt, difficult but not tedious or impossible. A little time consuming but not a time sink. And the same goes for the ones being hunted, it should be an excitement being hunted, avoiding and tricking the merc/hunters. It shoulnd't be annoying and frustraing to be hunted.

That is where I think the challenge is, as often in games the solution tend to favor the majority who does A but not the ones doing B. I love stealth in general, in games but making it too easy/powerful would have negative consequences for other people playstyle.

Not sure if that made sense, I do see the perspective of everyone but after 11 year of coming and going into Eve. I find every career with their own challenges in the same arena such as time sink, too long and so on.

I am not looking for unnecessary arguments that doesn't discuss a possible solution, however since you brought it up...
I did add cheap/free and not free on its own. And also compare to say the cost for a trader, it is considerably cheap and fix cost depending on how many locates you would have used. And 250K * 100 = 25mill isk is still a cheap cost for this career, especially since I know the average location would be around 25 use divided between 8-15 other merc. Say it was 15, that is 1.666 milion isk per pilot. That to me is very cheap and almost free if you have managed to rank up to lvl 4 plus the other skills used for merc/hunting.

This is purely subjective so you can say I am wrong, but comparing with other career who have to spend 100 million to do what they do alone, it is cheap in my opinion.

However, the focus of this discussion should be around:

A) What would be fair towards all pilots/career?
B) What can CCP do to implement/adjust previous features to make it fair?
C) What can we do meanwhile to ensure the merc business stays fun, engaging and worth the effort?

These are really my concern and interest, to look for temporarily solution that we have the power to implement as meta game, while encouraging CCP to provide the needed ground work to enjoy merc/hunting again. As I am not disagreeing but rather looking into this from other perspective.

So.. I guess I didnt mention that 10-100 locates a day was per member.. EVERY day..

But anywho.. the focus of the discussion should be that CCP does not acknowledge that it is an issue.
The watchlist changed with no thought about other areas of use than for hunting Titans/supers.
"The character watchlist is now known as the 'Buddy List' to better reflect its usage"

With removing a tool without replacing with another tool kills that kind of gameplay.

We have been waiting for 3 months now since CCP Lebowski told us we would get a respons on our feedback.

The easiest way to fix this.. bring back the watchlist and tie it to wardec mechanics.
Then we are actually paying for the intel. the defender should also have watchlist available ofc.

I'm open for any other option that could replace the watchlist as a tool for highsec hunting.
I'm just saying by combining it with wardec mechanics would invalid all the reasoning for the buddylist change.
And be the easiest "fix"

But since CCP dont want to respond or acknowledge it kinda falls on deaf ears.
Almost any solution would be better than killing an emergent gameplay like this.

Well, I'm definitely getting the silent treatment.

Lets see..
I've tried the eve forums, twitter and even personal messages on slack with no luck.
Havent touched reddit tho, but feel like thats no point with the downvoting thing.

What to do next? Give up?
**** no... I have more patience than this

The answer for everything is not charging more of the client.. its 42.

Devils was specialized in hunting. ie, tracking the ****** down.
Paying us more would maybe give us more incentive.. but the work involved would still burn us out.

And to be fair.. with hubhumping enteties takes on contracts for just above dec cost, just to have more "free" wars.
Raising the cost is not an option, even before watchlist we "asked to much" and lost clients due to that.

Edit: And if you didnt know.. the quote you posted is what we did BEFORE the change.. now that we dont know who's online.. we basicly have to run even more.

Perhaps it's time to murder spaceships outside of highsec then?

It costs significantly less, has better fights, and you can pretty much shoot everyone.

Killing people in highsec isn't 'emergent gameplay', it's killing people in Highsec.

Sorry that a good change towards watch lists, that kills the opportunity for fights is preventing you from killing mission runners. You said the effort wasn't worth it anymore, I just suggested trying something else.