EVE General Discussion

People were whining about the same stuff in 2007

This thread touches upon an important point that gets neglected in most of the current discussions:

The problem that miners currently complain about is primarily a problem of culture, not a problem of game mechanics.
However, if culture does not improve it will inevitably be "fixed" by way of game mechanics (which would be to the detriment of everyone, I think).

Activities like suicide ganking, scamming, corp theft, ... add a lot to the game as long as only a small minority actively pursues them. In that case they add some spice to an otherwise bland high-sec experience without seriously impacting the game overall.

However, when/once these activities become mainstream they will quickly stop being an enhancement to the game and become a detriment.

I think most of us know a similar problem from other pvp games - imbalances in classes/builds are generally unproblematic and can often be a boon to the game as long as they are not widely exploited.
But once every drooling idiot starts to use the "overpowered" FotM the game becomes unplayable until the next patch (some games have draft/ban systems that can act as a short-term bandaid in such cases).


Imagine you are a corporation CEO in EVE - one corp theft every few months should generally not be a huge problem. Sure it does hurt and it will make you reevaluate the procedures you had put in place to limit the impact of such thefts - but it should not put the continued existence of your corporation into question as long as you have managed it well. In fact, you might see such events as one opportunity to set yourself apart from less competent CEOs (who will get hit that much harder).
The game rules that allow corp theft work very well in this case - the thief can feel smug about the theft, the corpmembers can feel morally superior to the thief and the CEO can live his dream of being a corp CEO. ^^

Now imagine that instead of one corp theft every few months, you have a corp theft every few days - regardless of whether there is anything worth stealing or not. Free T1 frigates and some stashes of cheap modules? why not steal it when you can?
All material losses aside the morale among the honest member of your corp will drop really fast in such a case - suspicion and paranoia will take over.
In that case you can either lock down everything - don't hand out any assets, do extensive background checks on new recruits, ... - or shut down the corporation. Either way not only do your corpmates and you suffer, all budding corpthieves in the EVE universe suffer as well as there will be one less target for them.


Now, according to regular predator/prey dynamics we would expect that at some point there aren't any corporations left that the thieves could steal from and the number of predators will start dropping.
But this point of view omits that we are talking about a real-life business that needs continued cashflow to operate and has a reputation to maintain (which is not easily restored once it has been destroyed).
The game master has to intervene long before the "natural" return towards equilibrium would set in and when appeals to reason "Can't you see that you are hurting yourself by overfarming your prey?" prove to be fruitless he can only respond by changing the rules.

There is no black/white distinction between "good" and "bad" game mechanics - strict application of the categorical imperative does (in my experience) generally not result in games that are fun to play, imbalances and small exploits are perfectly fine as long their use doesn't spiral out of control - and whether that happens or not is very much a question of community culture. Do you have gamers who just want to pwn using the latest fotm or do you have gamers who share some concern about the state of the game as a whole?


tl;dr suicide ganking, corp thefts, scams, ... are great for EVE - as long as only a few people engage in these activities.
Once they become popular these "good" game mechanics become problematic and CCP would be forced to change them (for business reasons) long before any natural return towards equilibrium could set in - ultimately reducing the scope of the sandbox to the detriment of everyone.

You can't fit a hulk to avoid a gank. Gankers will gank you no matter what you fit, so this line of reasoning is bull. Gankers just want better loot to salavage, that's why they all parrot this tripe.

When I started with eve some years ago, eve was almost perfect, lot's of clear sky, an extremely helpful community, and this wild mix of things you could do according to your mood.
Going into low and 0.0 if you need some adrenalin to kick in, missions if you had to fill up an hour of free time, mining if you wanted to do something in the middle of something else.
It was this heritage from elite that got me. If I look at eve now, the picture becomes quite sad. Technically eve get's better and better. The visuals are still stunning, and a lot of the stuff that was annoying in the past have been dealt with. Than eve lost something important to me. Do you remember this video the butterfly effect? “A group of miners calling for help in local ...”. Well truth is, the miners would be probably ganked before they even finished typing, not mentioning flying there, locking the enemies … 0.0 has become so small that you can not dream of getting a piece of that pie, unless you play but monkey for a big alliance. WH space is quite ok at the moment, but looking at the decisions before I am sure that they will find a way to nerve them too. The forums are filled with people as helpful as rattlesnakes and with about the same attitude or IQ, and if I check the posts in my alliance I see that they have been robbed the 3rd time now, by trusted long time members. The community degraded and it seems that the developers at CCP share their vision of death match unlimited. Not that death match unlimited has to be a bad game, but it will not be the game I dedicate a lot of my time, and I guess it would be WOT in this case for me.
From what I see future eve will be played only by full time eve professionals, gankers and masochists. Since none of that apply to me, guess I will let my subscription run out. I am sure eve will not die, and I applaud the CCP game designers that stick to their vision of the game to a point, that it even risks their jobs (or at least the jobs of some more colleagues).
So good luck to all who decide to stay. Go down fighting. Hope that I will find reason again to revisit eve.

Harnessing the stupidity and short attention span of the lowest common denominator.

Now let me know how that works out for you when the gankers warp to the cloaked ship that fingered you, and there's a point on you before you can act.