EVE General Discussion

Even if the threat of PVP was removed highsec wouldn't be 100% safe. NPC's do kill ships every day.

I had a response back on page 15 or 16 that talked about an alternative to the theory of no PVP in highsec. Basically my thought was to have PVE require PVP fittings thus reducing the one sided favoritism towards PVP gankers.

One of your problems though is you are breaking the game down into income areas and not considering the other options that could be used to encourage people to try low and null. Right now there is no good reason to go to low sec unless you want to PVP because of the way low is designed. Make low easier for small groups to access, setup areas, defend, and be productive. Low should be like the training ground for null, not a place where only pirates can make a living by preying on others.

Saying a "safe" highsec provides too much income is silly though because you don't know how people use their income. So what if someone can make 500mil isk over two weeks running lvl 4's without the threat of someone ganking him. He'll take that 500 and save some of it, maybe spend some on a plex, or use it to buy more ships. How is allowing that player to enjoy the game the way he prefers detrimental to anyone else?

I saw the argument that someone mining lowers the value of someone else's ore but the truth is you don't need to blow up the miner to increase the value of your ore. You just need to out mine him and find a good market for your ore. Both players can mine in peace and the only conflict occurs at the market table. How does allowing someone to enjoy mining hurt the game?

The thing getting overlooked is the likelihood of someone who PVE's to one day try out PVP. A percentage of the people trying out PVP will enjoy it and make it a regular part of their play. Some of those people will move into low or null and become part of the more hardcore aspect of the game. However if you try to force the PVE player into conforming to an all or nothing PVP style there is a good chunk of players that will just leave thus reducing the overall PVP population.

Why is it so important to think of EVE as a PVP only game? It's not. WoT is a PVP only game. EVE has far too many other activities besides PVP to categorize as some kind of hardcore frag fest. The truth is the most hardcore aspect of EVE is the fact you don't get your ship back once it's exploded. Everything else is the same basic things you see in pretty much every other MMO out there that has both PVE and PVP areas. The sooner the PVP only community and the dev's realize they aren't all that special the sooner the game can be made more appealing to the masses bringing more life to all aspects of the game.

Oh for christsake. We have been over this so many times.

The Orca can fit a tractor beam and you can fly in a quasi orbit around the asteroids using bookmarks.
The Orca can fit a bunch of webs (same with the Hulk) and you can mine with both aligned with a Safe spot or POS.
And finally, the Orca, with its 66.8m/s max speed can keep up with 75% of the Hulk's base 87.5m/s or 65.6m/s.

Stop lying about things that have been explained to you in great detail.

And where are the 35 fits of different Cruiser Hulls with 80k EHP. I let you include all normal Cruiser Hulls, like you asked, when are you going to deliver?

When EvE shipped there was no Suicide ganking because CONCORD was tankable, and killable. Mining has been made safer dozens of times. The only way to make it safer would be to remove the ability to shoot them in the first place. There are two easy examples of what happens then; look how many people are mining on SiSi and in SW:G....

Mining in HS is exactly as risky as the Miner makes it, since there are plenty of ways to make your Hulk either hard or impossible to kill.

And who decides to join a game that explicitly allows violence anywhere then complains that he found violence somewhere?

I'm not denying the impact of reduced supplies on an economy, I'm referring to the effect on an individual level.

Remove Hulkageddon from the last month and prices of ships are reduced significantly, which means ISK has more buying power since the rate of ISK generation doesn't really change that much. When ISK has more buying power people find it easier to take on more risk since the costs of replacing a ship are easier to manage. In the end more ships get destroyed but they are relatively easy to replace.

The worst thing that can happen to EVE is have high market prices as it increases the risk thus reducing the overall number of people out trying new stuff. The entire economy could eventually slow down and the process would just feed on itself causing more and more people to play safe instead of risking increasingly more expensive ships that can't be replaced without a lot of hassle.

Of course you need a balance because neither extreme would result in a long-lasting game.

Right now, suicide ganking and wardecs are part of the things keeping that balance in highsec. If you nerf any of these, you need to buff something else unless your goal is to increase the average highsec income.

If you don't like other people shooting you, what tools would you suggest to replace the risk potentially removed?

As I said, increasing NPC AI only shifts the tear buckets from place.

Isn't that what we don't want? Fleets of big expensive ships blobbing each other with no worries because they are easily replaced?



Or people would fight in smaller, cheaper ships. I don't see a problem with that.

Since you're aligned, a ganker can't get the first shot off. We've been over this.

I can see that happening.. every other MMO I've played always has impossible areas that get put on "farm status" after a little while.

Honestly, I think highsec is fine the way it is. You're not going to get AI that's as good as an actual player.

There are still some decent pirates out there that will convo and sometimes offer tips on things you could have done differently. Even had a ninja looter contract my wreckage and mission loot to me after talking for a bit.

Some people take a ship loss WAY too serious, and fly off the handle like a lunatic.

I'm not certain if I count as a "highsec carebear" - I may spend most of my time in high sec (for now), but won't shy away from a combat if duty calls. Still, I'll answer your question for the sake of high sec completeness:



An honest response is that I never fly a ship I can't afford to lose. My three day old alt was already sitting in a Noctis, salvaging the same room as my main was running. The ship went pop on a slight miscalculation - 5 minutes later, the alt already sat in a new Noctis. Likewise, my main missioning birdie is a semi-faction CNR. If that ship goes pop, I can replace it within minutes, no problem. So beyond your usual "oh crap" moment, there's no major grievances for me. That of course doesn't mean I will be pursuing stupid risks - do what you can to be safe, but if things go sideways - and occasionally they do - shrug it off, because that's really all you can do. I have my own personal "insurance fund" to ensure that I can always recover from a loss. Less painful that way :)



This is a hard question. Imo, The higher the risk the higher the reward should be. However, you should consider that there is a significant portion of players who will not take a higher perceived risk than they're comfortable with, no matter how big a reward you offer. I still remember all those years ago, when I first entered low sec. I entered in a Merlin in a non-augmented jump clone (not kidding) and still went "oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die!" And then... nothing happened. Not that time, not the second, the third, the tenth, no boogieman at all. Then I lost my ship in Jita to a random gank (luckily empty, guess the guys forgot to scan :p).

In the end, you realize that it's all just a perceived safety. If you are a valuable target, you'll get popped, 0.0 or 10.0, it doesn't matter. And if you take the necessary precautions, low sec/null sec isn't some boogie-man that waits in a dark corner to blow you up as soon as you show yourself.

So, to answer your question, I don't think how hard an item is to obtain should be directly related to the rating of the space. Instead, it should be related to how hard it actually is to get. Let's take for instance exploration. If you're a member of, say, Goons, then you can run all over Deklein scanning for stuff and you'll have practically no competition. If, however, you run exploration right outside Jita, chances are all those radar and mag sites are going to be cleared out, because there's 1001 person doing exactly the same thing. In the end, that high sec explorer is going to have a hell of a harder task actually finding something that's worth more than the ammo spent. So what if there's no looming boogie-man hanging over you in high sec? So long as you take basic precautions, scanning in low or null sec is not much dangerous - if at all - and the overall rewards are great. So why don't more people move out? Because the perceived risk is too great.

One could almost say that the null sec corporations privatized the Boogie-man. And as long as they don't make more people welcome, more people won't come. Well, other than an occasional high sec dweller with delusions of grandeur and a daring plan ;)

Good post. I especially like the mention of "perceived risk" as it truly reflects how I feel when I play EVE.