EVE New Citizens Q&A

Look, gankers are gonna gank.

You either allow PvP in highsec or you don't. Making "just one more nerf" to satisfy your sense of justice isn't going to change anything. Making it harder to gank with more NPC-enforced hoops to jump through is just going to narrow the window of targets or increase the cost per gank for gankers, not stop them. Still, ships will explode in highsec and you or people like you will start the drum up again for yet another nerf so it will be balanced.

Once players can protect themselves, it makes no sense to increase mechanical penalties on intended gameplay. Why should CCP make it impossible for players to be criminals and provide risk the intend after they spent all the time coding that possibility into the game? It makes no sense at all.

Gankers are already at maximum risk: they are free to shoot and have an infallible NPC force shadowing them. Because of these onerous penalties, they risk only the minimum necessary to get the job done. This is a predictable outcome of tightening the screws on them. If you want gankers to risk more, gankers have to be allowed to risk more which will require the loosening of ganking penalties. Or they just won't as is the option of every player in this game who gets to choose what to risk when they undock.

You can stop gankers, just not all of them. You have 100% control over making yourself unprofitable to gank. You also can protect a single target from multiple gankers with an ECM ship easily. Can you shut down a fleet of freighter gankers by yourself? No, but how would that be fair if a single player could thwart the efforts of 20-30?

Ganking is not completely stoppable because it is not just a profession or activity, but an actual mechanism coded into the game. All players are subject to it and the risk it presents, including the gankers, their non-ganking alts that you seem fixated on, and their bumping ships. Any player can engage in PvP in highsec for the cost of their ship and as long as that remains allowed, players will suicide gank one another. One more nerf isn't going to change that - all it will do is enable players to shove more ISK into their ships before a ganker decides to explode it.

Gankers risk nothing, they have way too much reward for the risk they take. So what they lose their 2M ship and their 0 isk pod..
They always gain stuff, imo if you're security status is -5 or below you should be a KOS for CONCORD, or anyone for that matter..
You don't get -10 sec status by 1 gank, you get that by making a living of ganking.

Why on earth can u shoot a 'suspect' but can't shoot a proven criminal.. If they would allow everyone to shoot people with low sec status things would be much better.

Wow, it is like the talking points from the Anti-Ganking channel came to life and made a forum post.

Let's debunk these shall we? First, there is no guarantee of a ganker being successful. They are subject to interference by white knights and opportunists (who can shoot first - everyone can shoot a criminal), traps (Orcas and those fleet hangers have cost me many ships), links/implants messing with your math, or just the target getting spooked and docking up wasting all the effort of setting up the attack. Even if they destroy the target, they are then subject to the loot fairy taking the good drops or other people stealing or destroying the loot. All of this risk is further amplified by the costs of reduced security status, the loss of the ship, a kill right and 15 minutes of ship spinning.

All of this for pretty much no reward. That was not always the case, but the profitability of ganking has been nerfed hard with the insurance removal, EHP buffs to industrial ships and CONCORD spawn time changes. It is now unprofitable to gank almost anything but faction+-fit ships or overloaded haulers. The math has been done several times on these forums, but even freighter and T1 hauler gankers who can make a living at it make less on average than a typical L4 mission runner when you factor in time hunting and scouting and the number of people required.

How can you claim that gankers have too much reward when they are exposed to extreme risk, significant costs all for rewards that are less than the mission runner who risks essentially nothing?

We had a 14 year old in our corp who's recently left to try out Nullsec warfare. I'm 24. We have a lot of people in their early and late 20s in my corp. It's not an age thing, it's a mentality thing. While I do think there is a problem when it comes to attracting and keeping players to EVE, it's most certainly not ganking, CCP have even proven it's more likely to keep people around. A player who can't handle having a ship destroyed in a game that's about (among other things) blowing up space ships, wasn't long for EVE anyway.

How are we 'dickheads' for pointing out simple facts? I haven't said anything insulting, or 'mean', I've simply corrected you and pointed out a simple truth. I'm not the one throwing around insults and trying to belittle the opposing argument by calling them old fuddy duddys or whatever.

Personal attack followed by unfounded speculations that are directly contradicted by statements from CCP developers. You are not helping the discussion.

Eve is PvP sandbox game. This is spelled out clearly in the New Pilot FAQ. It sounds like your angst is stemming from your growing realization that Eve is not the game you thought it was.

Well, you either adapt to the game CCP is selling or you go play something else. You don't get to come here and stamp your feet and insult players for playing the game as it was designed 12+ years ago.

Players are intended to have risk, even in highsec and even in 1.0 systems. No where is safe in Eve. If new players can't handle that, they it best they find a less stressful game for them before they invest too much of their time and energy into this PvP game.

The presentation link is this one: http://www.twitch.tv/ccp/b/639617004?t=3h15m00s

Fyi ganks aren't actually all that common a thing outside of code. and the trade hub undocks.
CODE. Thrive off of controversy and scandal, they literally live off of it so the signal to noise ratio is waaaaaaaaaaay off when discussing this topic.
You are much more likely to get hit with a wardec from someone like us and those can be either avoided or trivialised fairly easily.

It's often a means to an end, nothing more. While it may appear to be senseless spaceship violence on the surface there is often a deeper reason for it.

Take CODE. for example; I know for a fact that several members of that alliance have alts or friends that mine, that produce and sell mining ships, freighters, destroyers, modules etc. The act of suicide ganking with the overall intent of profiting from replacing that which has been destroyed could be considered to be an aggressive marketing campaign, and the cost of doing so written off as a business expense.

It's also used to drive out competition for resources and to strike at the supply lines of hostile corps and alliances that use NPC alts or 3rd parties to carry out their commerce at minimum risk.

Eve is a hyper-capitalist universe where cut-throat practices in the pursuit of your goals are the norm, Weyland Industries would be right at home here.

A lowsec where you are , for all intents and purposes, forced to practice NRDS instead of NBSI. Wardecs are akin to a hunting licence, you select your prey and you pays your money; go outside the terms of your licence and Concord stomp on you.

Although there are problems, for the most part wardecs are working as intended tbh.

Please think about this Mr. Paws (hehehehe). The fact that ganking exists in game at all is wonderful. It gives the game character. The conflict it spawns, and is spawned from, makes EVE actually feel like a cyberpunk space space opera universe instead of just being painted like one. I don't even actively role-play, but in the background while I'm PvPing, or doing anything really, my inner 12 year old is playing pretend and it feels authentic because of the interactions possible.

Let me tell you a quick story from my second week in the game, it's a story that I hold very dear when it comes to EVE.

I had just started a 'Newbie PvP corp run by newbies' (I was adorable). One of the guys I had recruited was even newer than I and couldn't even wrap his head around some of the basics (yet). He got into a duel with a more experienced player and lost. Due to a language barrier, the vet thought my corp mate had insulted him; In response, the vet essentially held him hostage for an hour by warp scrambling his pod and refusing to kill him. My corp mate being so new, didn't realize he risked nothing by dying (no implants), or that he could self destruct his pod. My first thought was to tell him to self destruct and be done with it. Then I got an idea. "Wait a second Azda, what are you doing!? This is EVE! Kill that mofo!" I asked my corp mate what the guy was in. Just a Condor.

Now we get to the important bit. I told my corp mate to click approach on the dude's ship, and accept my fleet invite, while I got busy buying and fitting a Catalyst. I had learned of CODE. by that time and heard about what they do with Catalysts and thought: "I can do that". Couple minutes later, I'm in warp, sweating, heart beating out of my chest and a bloodthirsty grin on my face. I land and see him start moving in panic; too late sunshine, Azda is here. Scram lands, blasters blast, ships explode, and concord sends me home. I avenged my corp mate, spilled space blood, and became obsessed with this game. I don't even gank much; I've done maybe 10 since i started, the mere fact these types of stories that I and many other have experienced are possible are justification enough for ganking to exist in my opinion.

TL; DR: Ganking is simply a byproduct of the freedom the game and it's rules provide. The reason I and other people who aren't even gankers don't want it to be eliminated is that it would take away a part of what makes EVE special.

We don't want WoW in Space (pardon the cliche, but it's apt in this case), we want EVE.

Ahh I remember the dawn of home computers, when 6502's and Z80's with 16-48kb of ram, and expensive 8086's with 128kb of ram, were more than enough.