Crime & Punishment

We bumpers have the same problem in that we cannot wardec a miner in an NPC corp, yet we have no trouble suicide ganking them in their CCP-tanked ships anyway. Why? Because we fit properly and execute the attacks reasonably coherently. More to the point, we actually do gank them, whereas the common miner response is "someone gank this guy". It's the old story about Everybody wanted Somebody to do something and in the end Nobody did it, and I've seen it many times in the short while I've been an agent. The real issue here, as is often the case with highsec, is that some people are willing and able to do things while others stubbornly refuse to help themselves, which is compounded by CCP's track record of yielding.

IMO, CCP should confine themselves to things like a more comprehensive tutorial, better UI, removal of excessive clicking, etc - stuff that helps new and old players alike to get on with the serious business of interwebz spaceshipping. The fact that they're even considering changing policy because a very small number of people are complaining about interaction in a multiplayer game is pretty disheartening. A better use of their time would be making ice belts deplete like ore belts do, because an endless stream of safe resources isn't good.

Honestly, that's what a lot of it comes down to - avoiding effort, avoiding interaction, I'm entitled to play solo. Yesterday in Abudban I had to endure the usual foul language and petty insults that so often are the standard level of "debate" of those who vocally oppose miner bumping. One of them, fully aware of who and what we are, then proceeds to fly straight to the ice belt and AFK mine, so I escorted his ship to the no-permit zone. Twenty minutes later he hadn't moved, so I think we can safely assume he wasn't playing Eve. Why should people like this get any protection, from CCP, or even from other miners?

Got bumped? Pay the 10m and keep an eye on local.
Got bumped? Fly a skiff and orbit with a prop mod.
Got bumped? Hire a merc corp to kill the bumpers.

Bumper ninjas? Darn I had something for this....something something pirates are better than ninjas because they had guns.

Hi sec bumpers hunting you? Warp around the system or to a different one.

Ransomed by bumpers? Take revenge by slipping an alt into their corp and awoxing or jacking their wallet. (or are we assuming that no pirates are in NPC corps)

They should not have to pay a fee in highsec.
The skiff works at times, but is not infallible.
They will enter dec shield or drop to an NPC corp and the isk is wasted.
...bumper ninjas....right
Hi sec bumpers hunt...this is turning into a bad parody. Please provide an actual argument, as this seems more or less like insulting.
They are not all in one corp, so this does not function as effectively as one would hope. Also, NPC corps.

I love the emergent nature of miner bumping gameplay. It goes to show just how amazing the EVE universe it when players are able to come up with new ways to interact.

I don't think anything is wrong with bumping miners. If they want to avoid being bumped, there are many ways to do so ranging from expensive (small fast mining ships in orbit) to cheap (10m permit) to free (Questions 3). Or, they could gank the bumpers. Or hire mercs. Or place bounties. Or just, and this may sound crazy but stick with me, move to another one of the hundreds of mining sites in the rest of the EVE Universe. They already have plenty of tools at their disposal and the choice is theirs in how they want to respond.

This thread isn't clear to me. What is it about? Do the people it's going to have the authority to make real changes, changing the physics of bumping or whether it flags; or is this just going for a rule review where they are going to consider whether to ban bumping +mining ship+ extortion + highsec, while keeping any combination of 3 of those without the fourth legal?

I don't see why CCP would carve out such a strange and narrow exception. Bumping is legal in many situations. Claiming a system, like goons freighter-ganking in Uedama, seems to be fine--or establishing a gatecamp in low/null is allowed. Extortion/renting is allowed. Ganking mining ships is allowed in highsec. But somehow, combining all 4 will be banned? Doesn't make any sense to me, but if CCP really wants to help out the afk/bot ice miners, they might lower themselves to that. I think they will be smarter than that, and realize that driving away real EVE players with strange violations of the sandbox like that is a much more pressing danger than angering bot/afk miners.

I think it is important to note that miner bumping has emerged because of the barge buff. The number of barge ganks has dramatically decreased and the number of miners bumped has dramatically increased. The significance of this is that a change to game mechanics does not stop players from doing what they want to do.

Before any changes are proposed and or considered for their implications(many of which are unintended) the response to these changes has to be considered first. If by some ingenious way CCP were able to completely stop miner bumping without any unintended ramifications I would expect AWOXing to rise significantly or some other method that forces player to player interaction.

Any "fix" to miner bumping will merely move the problem to another aspect of eve gameplay. I suggest it is the forced player interaction that the miners have a problem with. I suggest its the interaction miners have a problem with because they have chosen the most solo thing you can do in eve-online; mining an infinite resource to sell. As eve is an MMO I don't think there is a problem with the game at all, the miners themselves are the ones that need to be fixed.

The same miners that supported the barge buff probably support the idea that ganking(or otherwise killing) miner bumpers should be much easier. The same miners that complain that NPC corps should not be hiding places for miner bumpers are the same kind of miners that would have used NPC corps to hide. The same kind of miners that got folding and recreating a corp labeled not an exploit are probably scoffing at the idea that miner bumpers do the exact same thing. This meta-game requires a meta-game solution; miners - you need to solve this yourselves as in my opinion CCP is simply not able to do so.

To any miners still reading:
I suggest you pay the measly 10 million isk and start enjoying the emergent gameplay being provided. Payable to me in-game, thanks!

Regarding the complaint that there is "no counter" to bumping and that it is harassment:

1: The complaint about bumpers using NPC corps to avoid wardecs could equally apply to miners themselves. They freqently retreat into the npc corps to avoid wardecs so it's amusing that miners are complaining about the very game mechanics they have so often taken advantage of themselves. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

2: When it comes to ganking or "harassment" of miners by bumpers, the only difference between bumpers and miners is the level of organization and group participation. I can ask for help ganking a miner and several people will probably respond by spending their own ISK on a gank Catalyst, joining my fleet and participating in a gank in their own time. But when a miner wants to gank somebody in revenge and asks his fellow miners for help, they don't want to spend ISK, don't want to take risks and are quite possibly AFK anyway. The miners are helpless because they refuse to organize and are fundamentally selfish with their time and space-money in what is ostensibly a multiplayer game. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of disgruntled miners who have been bumped (nevermind ganked), if just 1-5% of them chose to fight back by building their own gank ships then they'd quite possibly see some success. But they never do, hence the "invincibility" of the New Order.

3: If it is harassment to bother the same person or group of people over and over again until they either surrender to your demands, flee or quit playing, then what does that make nullsec sovereignty? Or legitimate wardecs? I'm sure plenty of people "just want to be left alone" but EVE isn't the sort of game that can or should cater to that mentality.

Risk versus Reward

One of the most common arguments against bumping as a profession in EVE is that the risk vs reward balance is out of whack. Miners claim that there is no (or minimal) risk to the bumper when he goes about his business, and that there are no set repercussions either. It's true; the most danger we face is the minor (heh) possibility of an angry miner suicide ganking us, and as you might imagine, that doesn't happen awfully often.

However, the reward of miner bumping is also minimal, in keeping with the risk factor. It's true that some miners pay their 10 million ISK for a mining permit, but a majority refuse to, and we are in direct competition with several dozen other bumpers for the money from the percentage of miners that do pay. As an ISK-making profession, bumping is right down at the bottom of the list for EVE. As a risky profession, bumping is also right down there at the bottom of the list. As far as I can tell, this is balanced.

Of course, there is the potential for a lot of money, depending on the receptiveness of the bumped miners to the bumper's demands. Potentially, he could get 50 miners in a row that all pay, and he makes a relatively easy 500 million ISK (still not an awful lot of 'reward', though). However, this too is balanced, since there is equal or near-equal potential for miners to attempt to gank the bumper, and he could fairly quickly lose 500 million ISK in exploded ships. In fact, it would take less than half as many lost ships to lose 500 million ISK as it would take miners who pay their 10 million ISK.

A variation on this argument that miners commonly use is that the risk for the bumper is not equivalent to the loss (anti-reward) suffered by the miner. Gankers who gank miners inevitably lose their ships, while bumpers who bump rarely do. This is true, but I believe that a more pertinent statistic would be loss versus loss; the bumper should lose just as much as the miner does. This is undeniably true; the bumper incurs the opportunity cost of the time that he could otherwise spend doing more profitable things - like mining - while the miner loses the same amount of time from mining. The exception to this is if the miner in question is AFK, in which case they'll sit miles away from the asteroid while the bumper goes off to do something else. However, I do not believe that CCP should be giving any thought to the plight of people who play the game in such a near-exploitative way.

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Protecting emergent gameplay

One of the most valuable claims that EVE can make to distinguish itself from today's MMO market is that it is one of the only games where emergent and player-created gameplay is the gameplay. What we have here is effectively a clash of two different cultures in EVE; that of the people who want to stick to predefined mechanics to make their fun in a way CCP mapped out for them, and that of the people who want to take the mechanics CCP gave them and create something new and interesting out of them.

You've probably noticed, but nobody comes to EVE for the mining. Articles on big gaming news sites focus on EVE's emergent gameplay; Guiding Hand Social Club, Burn Jita, the Jita Riots, the Intergalactic Bank, BoB's downfall, I could go on. They don't focus on mining. Like it or not, the player content and the emergent gameplay is what makes EVE special, not mining or incursions or missions or any other content that CCP releases to be used in one way only. It's been said before, but EVE is not a sandbox, and it shouldn't become one. If it does, it's no better than any other theme park game out there, and should be able to expect the same average level of success.

[quote=Ahvram]
Edit: Rule 24 Off topic quote was deleted - ISD Tyrozan

As the thread titles explicitly states, this thread is about [i]miner bumping. I'm not sure why you're airing your grievances in here, but CCP Falcon did ask us to stay on topic. Do you think that you could, please?

Edit: If you do want a place to discuss freighter bumping, try here.

Edit: **** man, if you're going to edit my posts at least don't butcher them like this.

I think that the problem is not with bumping itself. In my opinion the problem lies with the mining mechanism, it is an activity that requires zero user input for extended periods of time. As a result, people go afk and do other stuff while leaving their lasers running in the belt. If anything should be changed it should be the basic mining mechanics that promotes players to be play the game afk.

Bumping itself is a crucial mechanic for PvP, it allows you to buy precious seconds to prevent a target from making it back to gate or before warping off. It also allows for spies/infiltrators to bump caps and supercaps out of a PoS shield, making for great emergent game play. If you use it in high-sec to bump miners and demand isk it is just another form of emergent game play, they can go to low/null/Wormhole space if they want to be able to fight back.

TL:DR: Bumping is a good and working mechanism. Fix mining instead.