EVE General Discussion

This is completely false.

Attack Battlecruisers and the major buffs to Destroyers were introduced around the same time as the insurance nerf. And the former two changes did not compensate for the latter.

Before the insurance nerf, you could suicide gank in ANY SHIP (even a Battleship) and the cost for doing so would have been equal or less than it is to suicide gank in a Destroyer today.

The insurance nerf made suicide ganking economically unappealing (or outright out-of-reach) for "casuals" and forced more professional ganking outfits to get more people and/or funding... both of which require effort.

Meanwhile, no additional effort (to protect themselves) was required of the carebears asking for "one more nerf."


I agree with a few others here... high-sec should lose some of its money-making capacity or general warfare/combat should be made easier to initiate. As it stands... high-sec IS too "safe."
And the people coming into this game now (or have already gotten used to this level of safety) have a lower threshold for warfare/conflict than previous generations of high-sec dwellers... reinforcing the feedback loop of "one more nerf."

This isn't the direction the game should be going in. I signed up for a game that is hard for EVERYONE because EVERYONE ELSE is trying to "get them."

Only in the case that my understanding is valid for 100% of cases, which I'd be fairly certain it isn't.

So that leaves those that do want to maintain their sec status with either spending more ISK for the same amount of ganking, or ratting longer for the same amount of ganking.

Either way, it's a nerf to those people, even if not all gankers care about their sec status. It certainly can't be classified as a buff to highsec (or lowsec) pvp.


The chart relates to a shift from HTFU to Themepark.

Removing the ability of combat links to work inside a POS shield was a nerf to those links, while not also applying the same nerf to mining links.

It makes providing combat links more risky (for both pvp and mission running) while allowing a mechanism to maintain complete protection for mining links.

In terms of nerf/buff classification, it was a nerf to combat links. More risk for one activity, but not applied equally.

Not all mechanics are black and white, but aside from the Rorqual, there's no need for mining links to work from inside a POS. Expose them to risk, in highsec, lowsec and nullsec if people want to use them.

All I read is "I can't shoot people who don't want to be shot/know what to do anymore" tears. Second shard? Give me a break. The economics alone of highsec-lowsec-nullsec-WH interaction are MORE than enough to disprove that, not to mention lots of residients of other parts of space use highsec for various things.

Here's an idea. If you love PVP that much, come out to Low-sec and shoot people who A: Expect it. B: will shoot back.

"Ganking has never been cheaper"

Cost has never been a balancing factor. Look at the fuckery with supercaps now.

OP points out a long history regarding HiSec content nerfs and I agree. The exception would be the attitude that social corps are somehow detrimental to 'HTFU' - I strongly disagree. They'll encourage new players to make friends and socialise, stick around for longer at absolutely no expense to the current HiSec PvP scene.

Social corps won't stop them dying to the same shenanigans that NPC corp members die to, and as you say they may encourage newbies to stick around, hence I have no objections to the proposal as it stands.

Slightly offtopic: What CCP does need to work on is education. I know they're working on it; but the NPE sucks, it's better than the "here's your ship, there's a rat, try not to die" NPE I went through, but it still sucks. It's a topic worthy of a thread of its own though, I'd love to see CCP start one along the lines of little things threads.

Sadly the key precept envisioned for 'social corps' is to make them 100% invulnerable to wardecs.

Oh sure, there will be lip service about them not being able to perhaps own POCO's or other 'balancing' factors, but the real intent is to kill hisec wars, with a potentially unforseen consequence of killing the robust hisec mercenary landscape along with it.

The approach isn't to close existing wardec dodging exploits, or increase NPC corp taxes to incentivize players into player corps. No, its more mechanics nerfs dressed up as 'increasing social interaction'.

There once was a dream that was EvE, and this is not it. This is NOT it.

F

A rose by any other name...

As I understand it, the social corps are mechanically identical to NPC corps, with the obvious excpetion that they can be created & named by players. As for in-game impacts: there are none.

I see absolutely no harm in introducing this feature. Players most likely to use it are the players that drop corp at the first sign of danger, anyway. So it's not like there's going to be a notable dip in targets.

Players in these corps do no avoid NPC corp tax, they cannot declare war, join alliances or claim sovereignity, they cannot establish POSes or POCOs. Every mechanical advantage granted to a regular corp is denied to the social corp.

If these social corps offered some sort of "free" advantage, I'd oppose them. If they somehow detracted from EVE's open world, 'HTFU' PvP or somehow made their members even safer, I'd be against it.

As far as I can see, they're just NPC corps with a different name and I'm OK with that. If it gets people to stick around longer without removing anything about EVE that makes it so unique then I say go for it.

I think with social corps CCP are trying to strike the right kind of balance, we know that there's a problem with newbie retention; social corps will give the already existing social groups in the NPC corps, which may well have a better retention rate than the NPC corp in general, more visibility and their own identity. At the moment finding out about them is very hit and miss, which is a shame because Eve is a social game and is better when played with others, plus they usually have operations running everywhere, doing everything.

Social corps not being able to be wardecced is neither here nor there, they're essentially NPC corps and pretty much every player corp is essentially wardec immune if it chooses to be these days, especially since instant corp rolling ceased to be an exploit. I think that the current corp rolling mechanic sucks and agree with Remiel in that it needs to be changed, either with penalties for doing it, or redeclared an exploit and patched out.

And another person misses the point, I suggest you go back and mine or whatever they do in provi.