EVE General Discussion

Maybe CODE has a purpose.

Let's look at example of what the overloaded freighter pilot is doing but take it out of Eve.

Lets call our pilot: Joe Pilot.

Joe has a house worth $250,000 and it is paid off.

Joe has $50,000 in the bank.

Joe is very fortunate, IMO. So Joe takes his $50,000 and mortgages his house 100% and toddles off to Las Vegas. He takes his $300,000 and puts it on black and it comes up red.

Is Joe unfortunate? Well in a sense, I suppose. I would argue that Joe is mother ****ing moron. Joe wanted a 100% return on his money but failed to consider the downside risk in that he could also be wiped out with a 0.5 probability.

That is how I see the freighter pilot who overloads his freighter (with cargo expanders which reduce his tanking ability) and then sets desto and proceeds to fly there manually without a scout, let alone a webber or any other sort of escort. And he is doing this in a game notorious for people doing bad things to other people who are imprudent. We all point to the exploits of the GHSC. We point to the various pyramid schemes and banking schemes and chortle with glee...maybe even tell our friends about it.

But when some schlub presents himself as a ginormous loot pinata we’re are supposed to say, "Hmmmm....that is not good game play." I'll argue it is the exact same thing. The Guiding Hand Social Club wiped out the group it infiltrated. It took just about everything in the corp hangars and destroyed a very rare ship and podded the pilot. The only difference is one took a lot longer than ganking a freighter, probably because the leader of the alliance GHSC went after was far more prudent than our idiot freighter pilot.

And prior to ganking nerfs, I used my freighter all the time. I even used to autopilot back and forth. At that time the best line of defense was "do not overfill your freighter." Rule of thumb was a billion ISK. I was paranoid and kept it well below that usually around 500 million. Was never ganked or bumped. Then came the ganking nerfs aaaaand we get CODE. Now nothing is safe. CODE. will use ransoms, and sometimes just gank for ***** and giggles. I think Miniluv does it thinking there is a non-zero probability that they ganking a competitor's freighter/logistics. In other words, I am literally arguing that the nerfs EVERYONE wanted is what has now given you CODE. and much more organized ganking. It is an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. This is what happens in systems of spontaneous order. Here is another thing about systems of spontaneous order NOBODY IS IN CHARGE. Note even CCP. Sure they can change the mechanics, but the players always have a response up to and including logging off and un-subscribing. As you note, ganking and war decs have been part of the game and are quite likely healthy for this game. The healthy part, I would argue, is in imposing costs on being imprudent.

Wherever you see some agency making imprudence easier and/or less costly you see Bad Things™. IRL we see things like for example, banking panics*. In this game, IMO, we see people simply walking away from the game.

*It is waaaay off topic, but I’d even argue that what happened in 2007/2008 is not unlike our dimwitted freighter pilot or Joe, but on a much grander scale, for example, not taking into account the correlated nature of the risk they were supposedly insuring against...insuring against uncorrelated risk is easy, correlated risks….good ***ing luck, so it was imprudence on a grand scale. Fortunately when an imprudent freighter pilot loses his stuff the entire game economy is not threatened. The fundamental changes that people want to implement to prevent imprudent freighter ganking on the other hand does, IMO, threaten the entire game.

This is butthurt report.
It did not change during all those years.
So dont complain that game changed so much in general, when it didnt.

Yes he is bad, not because he should play the game a certain way, but because he took a very high risk for a very low return. It is like picking up nickles on a road just past the summit of a hill where cars travel at 50mph. Most of the time the road is empty, and you can grab some nickles, but that one time you are out there and that car comes...not good.

You want to spin it as, "Oh well, he should be able to do that." Yes, he can. Our freighter pilot can be dumb in this game...but at the same time there are those who will take advantage of his foolishness. You just don't get what I'm saying.

If you insist on playing stupidly.....fine. Play stupidly. But do NOT come here and whine because you were stupid and somebody took advantage of it.

And I "like" CODE. I find their activities annoying. What I find fascinating and interesting is that CODE. is an example of how spontaneous order can give you unexpected outcomes. Everyone sat around saying, "Oh this will end ganking, make ganking less common, blah, blah, blah." Then along comes CODE. and says, "Nope!"

Not that I expect your really grasp what I'm saying here.

It is about understanding the game and how it works. I suspect you do understand the game and just want to change it into something entirely different. Hence your view that ganking and war decs should essentially be removed.

These are your common gankers, you see them in open world PvP games. What is different, is they have been able to convince you they are something more.
And its not their succes ganking is still here, its CCP not wanting to remove it.

Not them you dingbat, the process how they came about is what makes this game so damn intriguing to me. And you want to kill it by changing it at a fundamental level...so that we can't get that kind of process anymore.

See you have the incorrect attitude. You see CODE. as an unmitigated bad. You fail to look at the process that produced CODE. A player like Jonah, who by most accounts would be labelled a carebear*, but at the same time he accepts that this game is fundamentally a PvP game and that it is up to him to react to that via the choices he makes. He accepts that making bad choices can, and in some cases often do, lead to bad outcomes for himself. I would also guess he would look at those events as a learning experience. He also would not come here and whine about it**.

I don't like CODE. because of what they do, I like them because of what it means about the game.

*FYI, I don't consider carebear a derogatory term, when applied to players who do not want to engage in ship-to-ship PvP and want to play on the industrial/"PvE" side of the game. I find that side interesting too, and if that is what a player wants fine, no skin off my nose.
**Maybe he'd post if he felt it was an exploit. However, that i a special case and ganking is NOT and exploit. Neither are war decs since CCP put them in the game to begin with.

First off, number of complaints on the forums mean literally nothing, IMO. You could very well be getting a biased sample. It is like looking at the newspaper and trying to draw general conclusions while ignoring that newspapers are selecting articles that are deliberately designed to sell newspapers--i.e. you got a ******* ****** sample so your conclusions should automatically be suspect.

Second my guess is the the people who are no longer logging in...they may very well have been the HTFU players. Eve was growing before there was this shift towards things like no more can flipping, making war decs more expensive, and the indirect effect of the watchlist removal. Not to mention things like jump fatigue. These changes, for many players meant that they way they were playing were no longer viable. So they moved on. Now I have ZERO data for this. It is ABSOLUTELY speculation on my part. But then again you have **** all for data too.

What we do know, for a fact, is you want to change the fundamental nature of the game. You argue it will make the game better and I'm pointing out that those who like the FFA PvP nature of the game would disagree...and many of those who are still left would leave. So why should we believe you that if we want a FFA PvP game it would be better for us to remove that aspect?

The process you are referring is called propaganda. And it had and audience that is fitting, gankers. In a open world PvP game. Whats so special? That somebody uses propaganda? Its goonswarm thing. James was from Goonswarm.

So we will have to wait untill so much people play this game as in 2003 when it started. So big number will probably make them use the alternative option.