Crime & Punishment

Well if you mean that 100% ship-loss was not guaranteed in the beginning you are correct. Originally CONCORD was tankable and avoidable and nowhere near as overpowering as they are now. GM's used to play the game as CONCORD ships and battle players even. Highsec was much more dangerous back then.

But the core idea was there from the beginning - a reactionary NPC police force that would provide consequences for unwarranted aggression. This is how the developers chose to keep player-driven risk in highsec while providing some deterrence to pirates operating there. Over the years the police have been buffed to the point where now such an attack really is "suicide" as CONCORD is so powerful, but the core mechanic is still original one intended by the designers. As Jonah said, the game was designed around players killing and "griefing" each other and the "nowhere is safe" design philosophy is a result of that.

Regardless if suicide ganking was a little more survivable in the beginning, the main point is that nothing is "broken" as the current intention of CCP is that suicide gankers serve as a risk mechanism in highsec. You don't have to go far (pg. 59, here) to find the developers confirming this. It is working as intended.

I don't play this game to earn your respect. I am not interested in your space honour or your biased estimation of which activities are hard or require more skill. I play the game as it was originally designed, as a villain serving as one of the main sources of risk in highsec - I find that satisfying and fun. The game is better off that players like me choose to hunt players in highsec, forcing them to spend time and effort to protect themselves, and put them under pressure to fit their ships for defense rather than pure yield.

The risk of suicide gankers is the only thing that makes highsec a part of this competitive sandbox. In fact, without that risk, the game would not function as a unified PvP sandbox.

Certainly, hunting and ganking miners and haulers requires more effort and has more inherent risk than highsec mining or hauling, and even the push-button completely min-maxed state of the current incursion farms, all things you can do while watching a movie on another screen while printing ISK. In fact, here's a good yardstick for you: any activity where you can watch Netflix while you "play" Eve is not worthy of one's respect. It's absurd that such low-attention play is even possible in a full-time PvP sandbox game. The risk of ganking is only thing countering it.

In any case, heap your scorn on me - that is part of the job of a highsec villain - but I will keep serving as an agent of risk and playing the game as the designers intend. So, would you like to buy a permit?

Then why did you start a fight in a mining vessel?

If we go on following your logic, we can judge, let's say, all lowsec PvP by blapping a novice FW bear with a Hawk. It's the same routine: MWD, orbit, lock, disrupt, F1, target down. Not much in terms of resistance, either. But, if you look a tad deeper into the rabbit hole, you'll see tanky miner ganking, autopiloter ganking, hauler ganking, mission runner ganking, unlucky incursion runner ganking, freigher ganking, white knight gaanking, and, finally, hyperdunking. If all listed above is as easy as ganking untanked Rets, go ahead - grab another meta-fit Catalyst and shovel ISK and juicy killmails all by yourself.

You may enjoy challenge and risk, but if you found yourself sitting near a helpless FW bear in a Hawk, would you make the move "just because"? I know I would.

and that is probably why people are calling you guys psychopaths and for me personaly it has some merit. I am a WAAC player (win at all cost) but as in other games when your goal is to just grief people (no ingame goals or profits, just to **** on other people) that's psychopathic as it stands in the books :)

could never understand how one can take pleasure from another beeings misery but this world is crazy, CRAZY I TELL YA!

here goes the full circle. however you wanna call it. to take pleasure in someone elses misery is the thing i can't cope with personaly. call it what you will. it's fine in this game though as the rules allow it. what i find funny is how those people defend this attitude they have as normal behaviour.

but this discussion is as old as full loot games themself i think. even in other games some people always try to take a dump on another players pie... i admit, sometimes it's quite hillarious but sometimes it's just eroticalevels of bad and mean...

Your premise is that my pleasure is derived from your displeasure.

You are wrong.

My pleasure derives from making spaceships into spacewrecks and looting the goodies inside. Full stop. It just happens that I like the highsec law enforcement lifestyle so I stay in highsec.

Quit equating my actions in game to something outside of the game. The two do NOT correllate.

P.S. - if "misery" is really the word you're going for here, back up, calm down, take a walk and realize you are miserable over a game.

The best way to explain highsec, I've found, is like this. Highsec is like living in any First-World suburb. It's safe, for the most part, because a combination of social pressures and enforcement measures by the authorities keep the vast majority of violent crime away.

On the flip side, it's not TOTALLY safe, as anyone who watches the news can attest. Bad things CAN happen in highsec, much like bad things CAN happen in suburbia. Likely to happen, not really, but there's a chance.

What can I say... I specialy like the hearth shattering tears of those rare miners who leveled their Hulk with super expensive mods. It just has to hurt if the work of months gets turned into dust in seconds.

I know, this is sick.... It's almost like I think this is some kind of game or something...

If ganking was particularly easy I'd probably do it. It isn't so I don't.

Of course it is PvP. Two human beings, behind their keyboards have contrasting goals - one want to get their goods to market to sell them and one wants to stop them and take those goods. It the eternal struggle of predator vs. prey.

Look, if your opponent in Starcraft spends all their early game gathering resources, is it not PvP if you roll steamroll them and wipe them out without losing a unit? In Counterstrike, is it not PvP if your opponent rushes out into the open in full view of your squad and charges your with a knife so you gun him down? Of course it is.

These poor strategies of not defending yourself need to be countered by other players in those games otherwise their opponents might eventually gain an advantage. Those resources will eventually be used to build military units, or that idiot with the knife might get to a good camping position and pin you down or even stab you. These games, as well as Eve, require players to focus effort on their defense and if players choose not to out of greed, lazyness or even cluelessness then need to be called on it and destroyed - one player destroying another player.

It's clear you don't "respect" those predators defeating the prey and it is true that ship-to-ship combat between two more evenly matched opponents produces more diverse and interesting tactical situations. But if your goal is to win (that is gather resources and power) in the sandbox, such tactical situations are secondary to the real PvP struggle which goes on between the players.

Taking resources from another player is very much PvP, and PvP of more consequence than two players whelping T1 frigates in a FW complex. Destroying a freighter and taking months worth of effort from your opponent is a bigger PvP win than the closest, most exciting T1 frigate duel that has ever taken place. I guess it all depends on what your goals are in the sandbox.

But regardless of your goals in Eve, you really can't say that ganking someone isn't PvP.