Crime & Punishment

I wish more vets would say this. Mainly what I hear is how hard PVP is for a newbro, though of course easy for the experienced player (typically the one talking), how dangerous it is to even venture outside a station in hi-sec, and so on. I've found that hi-sec isn't that dangerous, the loss of the Retriever was the only loss I've suffered, not counting a moment of inattention on a mission. And I haven't spent my time cowering in a station. I haven't gone charging off into null sec, as some newbs seem to do, but that's typical of my play style. I'm wondering if PVP will turn out to be less dangerous than anticipated, just as hi-sec did.



I made a brief reference to that earlier, and it is off topic, but I've never had a good experience with a guild and I've tried a few. It could be my fault, but generally I find that I join and nothing much happens. All the fluff about helping newbies seems to boil down to a kindly vet taking the newb, or a group of newbs, along on a low level dungeon or two, then the vet goes off back to playing at his real level with his friends. Can't blame the vet for this, herding newbs can't be much fun. I have yet to see an organized program for bringing newbs along in a structured way. Maybe Eve corps are different, and I guess I'll try one at some time.

Constant nerfs to emergent gameplay aren't doing much to help content creators. CCP developed High Sec PvP into the state it is today, remember that.

CCP cares enough to monetize Ray-Ban knockoffs but not enough to stock their actual store... just sayin'.

What an interesting glimpse into the past! Thanks.

I found that a good alternative to grinding ISK was to buy PLEX with real $$. That eliminated a lot of the boredom for a while, as I had the cash to buy ships and experiment with different fits. I cannot imagine spending months watching a ship orbit an asteroid. At least watching paint dry has a purpose to it. Of course I immediately hit the SP wall. Yes, I could afford some skill injectors, but the actual time saved seemed out of proportion to the cost (I'm cheap about things like that) so I didn't buy many.

So I was slowed down anyway, but that wasn't a bad thing as otherwise I think I would have ended up with the flashiest ship and no idea how to fly it, with predictable consequences.

It could be that some balancing to the SP system would help. Wait to train, yes, but months to get level 5's?

I don't know, I'm still enjoying myself, but how long will it last? Only time will tell. Experiencing some serious PVP will be a critical point, I think.

I HAVE A VARGUR!


I would have to find it first though. It's somewhere. After living in Highsec for three years my ships have been slowly migrating around several different area's.


BUT I'M IN



EDIT: IT'S IN ******* RENS!


Talk about convenience

OH AND THE CAREBEAR THINGY


*Sorry I've had like...four...Nos' (An energy drink here in the States, they have like...ehhh...160mg of caffeine per can) and like noooooo sleep, I'm jazzing like a ************ right now*



My personal idea, from what I gathered second hand from the EVE Community, a Carebear is somebody who expects the game to completely conform to what they want normally in a PVE totally safe to do whatever I want Environment. They are the people who play EVE like it's either a Co-op or single player game, and get upset when somebody else comes in and kicks sand in their face.

( Which is a great thing about eve that we can do that,)


AS AN EXAMPLE:


I had a dude just today! Literally tell me that should not morally kill him because he super noobish,

(I tried, he was in a harby with six points and all I had was a Fessor)

But eventually he tugged my heart strings enough for me to let him go do his thing without me pestering him. He was pretty noobish. And a Harby with apparently 6 T2 WCS would've been pretty expensive, he had a skin on it to, so it was stupid blinged with random shite.


Uh. Anyways.

THAT, is kinda carebearish. He wanted to just do his own thing, PVE an not be bothered by anyone else and expected me to leave him alone because he was a newbro. A Newbro who probably plexed for isk, So He takes short cuts, as well. Over all, in mind that is a toxic player. A Carebear like that is Toxic because everyone else he comes by, he will spread his idea that Newbro's shouldn't be shot at.


I disagree, But I did let him go to, after giving some helpful hints about the MWD-Cloak trick, Safe spots and letting him know that HIC's are totally a thing. (Note to self: Bring Phobo's next time on alt and kill him to preserver honor)


ANOTHER EXAMPLE, On the PVP side of things,


My group Abysmal Gentlemen, Allied into a War with some FW corp, Mimmatar Brotherhood or something like that.

MB had dec an ally to us, Sons Of Punder, because they may or may not have awoxed a thrasher of there's. (Did I mention Son of Plunder was in Minnie FW, IF not, then they where) MB FREAK out, over the thrasher and decced SOP.

Kinda funny really, because they ended up loosing like, 10 bill? There was like two Vargur loses and some other big ****, and they were kinda upset over it. That we where in Rens, keeping him from getting to FW space to PVP....

They were upset at Abysmal Gentleman for allying into a war and keeping him from Pvping where they wanted to PVP. And wanted us to leave the Rens area and leave them alone. Granted we did pretty much destroy them. The CEO Poelisky. Pole something or the other, Polska! Yeah. He was an idiot.

ALSO, imo, Carebearish.



Nowaday, You run a mission and people will be, OH YOUR RUNNING MISSIONS? You ******* Carebear!"

Which is totally incorrect. I ran mission to get locators and isk back in the day. Now I trade and run incursions. Trade is ******* silly by the way. Best way to passively make an income btw,

But That doesn't make me a carebear for doing any of those.


This may have been little wibblywobbly but I think it gets the point across.

I don't know about that one, mainly because the most fun conflicts in Eve are where you are evenly matched or slightly out matched, I have had fun being totally out-matched, but that's because of the mess I found myself in in Stain.

What many people want is a fun conflict which they can handle and the third party thing can really ruin the content, I have seen it happen a number of times in 0.0. There you are having a fun and balanced fight and in comes some juggernaught that just flattens you, be it in terms of numbers, ships or even by pure skill and you sit there thinking well that was fun until... Though I have seen bitter enemies turn round and blap the people that came in to third party, that was something else and highly amusing...

May I recommend reading a technical tutorial on PvP I wrote a long time ago.

Google "Welcome to PvP, V2". You will see it, it is an old forum post.

It explains how the damage mechanics of the game work, and how your chosen method of maneuvering and ship building affects this. If you learn this stuff you'll be effective in small gang fights (not as relevant in large fleet activity).

Then you have to figure out how to get small gang fights. If you figure that out, please send me a link to your tutorial.

I have a different insight,as I believe that the answer is much more complex than the question, no disrespect intended.

Consider if you will the shift in focus on Nul Sec entities in recent years, the rise of the Super Power blocks that offer relatively safe access to ratting and anomalies that permit passive players to generate considerably more isk in Nul sec in dead end systems than by running Lvl 4 missions in hi sec, there are intel channels and with the blue donut there is quite a reasonable degree of safety, as such a renter in a major power block is safer than your average AFK retriever in hi sec, because the probability of CODE. showing up is pretty much Nil, with minimal awareness you can watch an intel channel and see potential hostiles incoming to your location. All of these things have lead to an increase of activity in Nul sec on the part of "Carebears" as such if you reduce the number in Hi Sec you reduce the statistical probability of them fighting, for example if for ever 100 people dec'd 1 would fight, you would need 100,000 people to generate a response of 1000 which is greater than the player base as it stands (Based on average numbers online).

In effect the economics of Eve has meant that there are less people in Hi sec and that means less people who may choose to fight back.

It is also worth mentioning that the average number of players online at a time is relatively low compared to what it has been in the past and the increase of wormholes means that less people are spread over a larger area, again reducing potential fighters.

Also if you reflect on the timescale you have highlighted, the last 6-9 months, is also the period which encompasses the "World War Bee" phenomenon, which has seen various people join the MBC in a fight against the Imperium/CFC which has again drawn the combat inclined hi sec member to move to join one the entities engaged in hostilities, all be it maybe temporarily but again, the movement of combat inclined people is away from hi sec.

And this is only highlighting a fraction of the sociopolitical influences on the Carebear turned fighter paradigm shift.

I think that also CCP has had a massive influence in regards to game mechanics, more and more ships or modules are being introduced which increase survivability in Hi sec further reducing participation in PvP on the part of the Carebear; for example the Vic Yacht with the cov ops cloak, the leopard which is all but invulnerable in the hands of an alert pilot; at least within hi sec. More cov ops ships being introduced, Astero, Stratios for example, T3 Destroyers with the instawarp flaw. If you look at a majority of the recent changes from the perspective of a Merc it seems to be slanted in favour of the victim and not equality, even something as simple as the tierecide of the warp disruption modules, this removed the 9km Meta scram and increase the CPU usage whilst reducing range in many cases making it harder to fit and less effective when you have fitted it...contrived or not CCP is making EvE an environment that makes it easier to avoid combat should you wish to which is further reducing the number of potential fighters.

The removal of the Watch list in favour of the Buddy list; there is no doubt that doing so has been both a benefit and a hindrance, yes the nasty Merc's can't add you to a list and see when you are online, run locates and come kill you...but by the same token, you can't add them to your list and see when they are online and in what numbers so you can't conceivably consider taking a defense fleet against them as you have no perception of their strength at the time unless you have alts out of corp/alliance but this requires planning for such an eventuality, not something a non combat focused person would likely undertake.

And of course the rise of bigger Merc alliances, the larger one's capable of fielding larger fleets and in some cases with Eye watering amounts of Logi, the Suspect flag for Neutral logi doesn't work, because anybody not in an NPC corp is basically executing their entire corp by engaging the Neutral logi as the aggressors on the kill mail are effectively adding their names to a hit list.

And finally, education, people are learning, they fly more shuttles than noob ships or T1 frigs, the cloaky warp trick, Warp Core Stabs (in some cases at least), use alts in bowheads or third party haulers to move expensive ships, traveling by wormhole, Nano Interceptors which are almost unlockable and can travel in Nul sec through bubbles which has further increased their usage.

But if I was to give a one line answer, those who want to fight have moved elsewhere to do it...there is no fight in Hi Sec because those that are left have no fight in them...that is what I fear is the reality.

Forgive the typos etc please, typing this on a phone was something of a challenge.

Excellent post by you and also by Mobadder Thworst.

It was in the thread that baltec1 got very salty over can flipping and not being able to make ISK from ganking a barge. But you still did not answer my question in terms of the timing because there was developer blogs, CSM involvement and a fanfest presentation on this a long time before it got implemented, and as James315 was close to the Goon leadership at that point he would have been informed of the mechanic changes. So it fits rather well.

I find Lucas Kell an excellent poster, he posts as he sees it and posts honestly, he has also been a ganker too and was involved when all this happened, I think the source is valid, you do not, that's fine.