Crime & Punishment

(Preface: For those looking for tears I apologize)

For those who follow such things J_315 made an entry today to TMdotCOM today covering his (biased?) views for the arc that changes to hisec have been on for some time. Regardless of your views on him personally (a goon sociopath?) I would encourage all of the eve community, and C&P in particular, to read the post and consider the future he presents.

http://themittani.com/features/highsec-rising-danger-safe-zone-eve


All that aside he does not layout an alternate vision for changing Hisec nor the steps to take to make such a change palatable to the eve world at large. As much fun as it might be to just assault the concord stations and watch the world burn, it isn't likely to result in much for game play. And once the fires stopped burning the results could be (at best) mixed.

But I digress. If we start from the assumption that the isk/risk for hisec is inflated how can it be improved? I am challenging you all as the C&P presence to present your views for where hisec should end up and the steps to get there.

For myself, I would love to see much more activity moved out to lowsec and nul. To that end I would like to see an encroachment of low and nul into empire. The means to do this are (largely) already in place in the sov and fw systems.

The first basic step would be to take the assassination of the Caldari ruler a fact and result in destabilization of empire space. Make all the 1.0 systems become the center hubs they should be. Make the adjacent systems 0.8 and then the next systems out 0.6. Following this, finally make concord a faction like other pirates. Buff up the faction police to be (effectively) the same as concord right now. But they only patrol the isolates islands established above.

Next step is to take all of this newly created lowsec and populate it with pvp sites similar to FW systems. However these sites are now populated by the local pirate factions of the area (Guri Serp etc). By grinding these plex you can then effect the security rating of that system. This gives a means for the hisec population to take back the lost space as well as a means for the sociopaths to lower system security and or prey on the intrepid grinding players. This provides a "semi" consentual pvp location in hisec. Additionally, it says if a hisec entity needs to keep grinding the sec status UP or that safer space becomes lowsec

Finally, the industry missions and mining available in each system needs to be a reflection on security statuses and sov style upgrades. However, to counter stagnation, make it so that as one side tips upward the other(s) are supressed. For example if you push up the mil rate for a system the belt rats get stronger to reflect the higher level of conflict. Therefore unattended mining becomes impossible in that system. Or as mining ratings go up the quantity and quality of rocks drops till its just veld belts. Higher industry could result in mission agents not having missions to give due to the presence of private security.

Things I see as positives.
Balance for the hisec isk faucets.
Ways for Hisec to expand and contract by player(s) intervention.
Provide controlled ways for limited scope pvp for nearly all players.

Drawbacks I recognize
System does not exist inside of hisec to have a PVP deadspace.
Troubles if too much lowsec becomes empire or the opposite.
Vast disruption in established supply lines effecting markets. (Arguably a bonus knock on)

TL:DR J_315 wrote a beware of changes to make eve safe post. I am wondering what c&p and the hisec lurkers would make on their own to change the status quo. And finallyI make a long proposal that integrates parts from FW Pve and Sov grinds.

The carebears keep pushing and pushing, and they're not going to like the responses.

Training ganking characters requires little effort. If war decs do the way of the dodo, then ganking is all that's left. Goons already do this, don't they? Uedama and other .5 systems generally see ganks happen of freighters and other expensive ships. So let me ask the carebears: when you push us to that point, how much are you going to cry when we gank you? Because it won't be 'if'. It will be 'when'. We'll hunt you down in your missions. We'll catch you on gate. Thirty or forty thrashers sacrificed to pop your missioning ship you keep saying should be safe. And we'll get the loot, too, because our probing ship will be on station. Our scooping Badge will be on station ready.

Go ahead. Demand to be safer. You aren't. And if you push us, you don't seem to get that we are the ones with the teeth, not you. You are the ones with the delicious tears we will harvest. You think all of us in high sec who fight wars are griefers? Kids, the real griefing will be done to CCP if they give you what you want. To quote a rather infamous man:

"I will rule this sector, or see it burned to ashes around me!"

We will destroy this game. You won't have your spaceships. We will force the PvP out of this game entirely, because no one will want to play in a game where at any moment, significant functions can be removed to cater to the lowest common denominator. And when that happens, you will be left in a game so boring it defies logic. CCP will lose this game. They will lose Dust. World of Darkness may be in the works like it has been, but it will be destroyed as well. CCP will be forever known as NCSoft 2.0, the company that destroys great games because of greed and not planning properly.

We will force you back to World of Warcraft. We will force you back to The Old Republic. This game was made for people who aren't afraid of getting their hands dirty and having fun. Some of us might stay in high sec space for PvP, but some of us have done low sec as well. And null sec.

C'mon carebears. Push us to the brink. In Dodixie I was one of the fairest and most honorable combatants. I can switch that **** off in a heartbeat. There will be no new blood no new blood for this game. There will only be bloodletting.

If there's one thing CCP should have learned in recent years, it's that when pushed hard enough the players will fight back. If you screw with PvP in any fashion, you affect the universal aspect of PvP. Remove it in any sense and this game is no longer what CCP claims it to be. Pure safety should not be allowed, doesn't CCP tell us that constantly?

If highsec was safe, why would anyone want to log on?

Pretty sure Anya means that if eve is made more carebear than it already is, with Crimewatch 2.0 and the new "i don't ever want to pvp" in high sec option. It'll destroy Eve, and quite frankly i agree. Imagine how the rates on everything would fall if there was no high sec pvp or high sec ganking.

Yeah as someone else said, Eve is not a game for everyone, but if CCP makes it a game for everyone there'll be nothing unique about eve, they already destroyed can flipping.

I'm refeering to the part where, in the old times if you got can flipped or a hostile entered your mission, you had the rights to shoot at that person and had to chose wether to defend yourself or not. Now you can simply just hope someone else kills that guy in that 15 min timer from going suspect.

High sec is carebear space idd, but if they add more like this safety system in 2.0 it's going to make it too 'safe'.

Another one of James315's self-indulgent tirades. Those should be published in novella form so that I can have something to put myself to sleep at night. /yawn

He, and others in the nerf hisec camp, have some valid points. There's really no arguing that. Eve has a 10 year reputation for being an unforgiving game, and a very large portion of the player base likes it that way. However, with subscriptions reaching record numbers, CCP just can't turn a blind eye to their increasing bottom line either. While there are a lot of baseless claims floating around, that is the SINGLE most important FACT in all of this, and cannot be ignored:

1) Many recent updates have nerfed hisec PvP.
2) Subscription numbers are at their highest point, ever.

Cause and effect? I'd venture to say it goes beyond "probably" and cozies up dangerously close to "very likely". With so many ho-hum WoW cloned themepark and F2P games out there, Eve is one of the last of a dying breed: the subscription-based sandbox MMO. It's also reasonable to say that the two biggest new player turn-offs to Eve are the steep learning curve and its non-consensual PvP element.

The trick for CCP is the same for all developers: increase veteran player retention, while at the same time attract a new player base. They're going to **** someone off no matter what they do. From a financial standpoint, new players are more likely to spend $20 extra on a PLEX or start up a second account while veteran players are already PLEXing their multiple accounts with ISK. Newer players are more likely to STFU and play the game, while veterans whine on the forums and file petitions that eat up resources. In short, at least from a financial standpoint, new players are where it's at for Eve.

I beta tested this game, but went to SWG instead. I played again in 2006 for a month, and for another brief stint in 2008. I've been an avid PvP-centered gamer for 12 years, but Eve was never able to hold my attention until I again decided to give the game a shot in 2013. So what changed? The improved security in hisec. I remember having to mine endlessly (which I hated) in a Bantam to save up for a better ship, only to have it ransomed and blown up anyway by pirates. This time around, I could enjoy salvaging and missioning in relative peace while I figured out the game, saved ISK, and skilled up enough to move on to other activities.

Is nerfing war decs and further increasing the safety of hisec going too far? Possibly. So far the pattern has been rather clear with increasing subscriptions directly correlating to that additional safety. I'm willing to bet that CCP will test the waters of even tighter security. So far, the doomsdayers like James315 have been wrong.

Since I'm feeling long winded today, I'll add another point:

The platform for the nerf hisec camp is that hisec space is an ISK faucet. Maybe my definition is a little off, but I would define that as an activity that has skewed risk versus reward: low risk and high rewards. On one end of the spectrum, arguing for increased safety are the missioners and miners who live in hisec. On the other, the PvPers...the mercs and pirates who advocate the sandbox element of Eve.

I'm no expert on the who's who of Eve, so I selected a name that I recognize all too well:

Cannibal Kane
Killed: 724 Lost: 35
ISK Won: 21B ISK Lost: 1B

Hot Rock Industries (his latest target)
Killed: 1 Lost: 17
ISK Won: 10K ISK Lost: 1B

This is just one example, but there is a trend. The activity of hisec PvP is an ISK faucet, as most who engage in it are highly profitable while maintaining low risk to themselves. Merc, pirates, and even terrorists (o7 Cannibal Kane) are usually operating at an extremely high profit margin.

The ISK faucet nature of hisec is what provides you with a target rich environment and your own ISK faucet. I can't help but wonder why some of you would advocate having the water supply turned off at your own tap.

Like I said, I chose the most prominent example I could think of.

If you look at the killboards of many hisec PvP corps and alliances, they all have similar results. Causing heavy casualties while experiencing few of their own. It's no secret that lulz are a major part of the hisec PvP business. But there's also real ISK making potential there in the form of loot drops and salvage from those juicy carebear mission ships, freighters, and mining barges.