Assembly Hall

Coreli corporation, Guristas, Sansha's Nation.

These names mean something to us but also mean nothing to many more of us. These are the little red X's of yore, passing irritants at gates to be sidestepped and ignored, mission kill objectives, haven rats. In the mighty world of EVE there is the opportunity to somewhat work with the pirate factions within their own space. You run missions for them and are compensated monetarily and with LP for your time. We understand this is just a mechanical novelty, introduced years after the games creation to make this 0.0 NPC space semi livable. I'd like to expand on a few of these ideas.

With the ongoing projects surrounding making more pirate ships in the game a terrible oversight has been committed by the developers at CCP. This oversight stems from a lack of producing more meaningful ways to interact with the very pirate factions we should ostensibly be working with in order to achieve our aims. Right now so very much pandering is happening to those in deep null, the vociferous groups of nay-sayers whom spend much of their spare time "ratting" (though whether this refers to killing things which breed like rats, or running a rat race is a saying I have never been adequately explained) and chasing their cheap ISK that no consideration is seemingly given for the near always abandoned sections of space to which no man can give allegience. You could theoretically own a system by planting a citadel in it, now, until someone else contests this with their own citadel. You will periodically find some smaller null entities resting their heels in null while they grow fat on easy LP items. You might even optimistically find a proper null inhabitant who lives in pirate space for the thrill of it, the ease of access to surrounding sov null space. But you will never find an actual NPC corp player of this kind.

I am not specifically requesting the ability to join Guristas Pirates although this would be pretty cool. In an abstract kind of way you could become your own character like Estamel or Thon, a known entity within a given factions space. Getting rewards in money and LP for killing people with very low Gurista standings, potentially even getting a greatly expanded LP store with which to buy things and make otherwise unique investments that few others would care for. Within the faction itself killing other guristas members would be shunned far less than in other organisations. We are pirates after all. Leading an overt war against Caldari Navy being optional, defending from incursions by other pirate factions or drifters another novelty of the space.

It seems odd to me that we cannot buy DreadGurista items in LP stores. Despite CN/DG items being objectively worse than c-types (which is understandable but sad) or t2 (unacceptable) these items are just not available at all from the LP store. As part of building a narrative and maintaining some useful grounding for ship construction I think that having a much expanded LP store is essential to any further iterations on NPC pirate space. A greater focus on kill missions in hostile space like FW does with its missions. Traveling in to sov null or hostile pirate space for incredible rewards but fraught with the danger that comes naturally from these things. Killing people running DED sites if you find them relevant to your faction thus awarding LP and money.

A great expansion of ideas for immersion and gameplay is possible. Taking existing ideas already in the game and putting them out in the far reaches of space, we know that FW works because every day people are being killed in complexes. We know however that drifters have been almost completely abandoned by the devs, the proposed drifter space and drifter LP store from 2 years ago never materialised, their incursions closed and their AI an exploitable mess. Perhaps with these new blood raider citadel complexes a push in a more tangible direction is occuring but I'd rather cut to the chase and make more of those 1% improvements to the game which provide more benefit for less effort.

Drifters were a noble venture and I applaud you but it as a feature it is incomplete and this saddens me greatly. Let's get some more love to the now decaying and rickety NPC system in null which has been left to gather dust for almost a decade.