Assembly Hall

I don't suppose we could get a list of who turns up to these?

I prefer to keep the lists of attendees of both these roundtables & focus groups private, as I don't feel it's information that would add to the actual points of the discussion. I do try and keep them as representative as I can though.

You know, there are not always two sides to a debate.
Worthwhile changes are the type that promote highsec aggression, while counterproductive changes are the type that promote Carebearism. A Carebear, for the purpose of this discussion, is a capsuleer who plays EVE like a solo game and spends all his time grinding for ISK to buy a PLEX and bling modules for his grinding ship so he can grind slightly more efficiently for another month.
There are still some capsuleers who have actually spent their entire existence in highsec and never even experienced PvP.
The CSM should do its best to ensure that such a fate does not befall our new players.

I think there should be a healthy ganking culture. But what is missing is the ability to white knight. I don't know what this would look like but it should be active and engaging, not just hanging around in a cloaky ECM ship. If it could be brought about highsec could be revitalised with quality content.

Still looking for participants here. Please try and get in touch as there is limited time before the summit in which to organise this :)

How wonderful that you, and you alone! get to define just how a sandbox is played! Congrats! So, according to your singular definitions, a player who is only interested in mining, fabricating, inventing and building --which is, you know, part of the overall sandbox-- must be some sort of failure because they have no desire to "pew pew".

You, and others of your ilk, continually bleat that Eve is a spaceship versus spaceship killing game. I have no problem with that, as that is a large part of the sandbox. But it is only a part; it is not, by any means, the sole entirety.


Jin'taan, I would very much like to be a part of this round table.

Sincerely,

Albrecht Patrouette

Why? If they enjoy that lifestyle who are you to 'save' them from it?

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It seams to me that Highsec ganking is generating a lot of conflict in Highsec. This is evident by the many tear mails we see on this forums and everywhere else. For EVE, conflict is indeed the desired content, it is the motor of the industry and lifeblood of the game.

Every part of EVE which creates content will generate tears and people who say it should be nerfed on the forums. The question is, is there actually a problem or is it just people who are not aware of an already pretty good balanced game mechanic? Maybe the answer here is education?

I know the first reaction to tear post is to assume we need to fix something in the game. But what about all the other parts of the game which create no tear mails and traffic on the forums because they are pretty much dead? If you want to make EVE a better game the focus should be on this game mechanics I think. Enable the people there to create content for other people since this is what makes EVE interesting.

No one joins EVE to become an AFK miner/hauler or to run the same linear mission for the millionth time. Think about it.

One thing I found a pain was the mechanic that makes ships invulnerable as they undock from a station. Having attempted to lie in wait for a suspect / criminal to undock, only to find that they can just warp off before you can even start to get a lock on them. Criminals, Suspects, and -10 security status should not have the benefit of an invulnerability timer when undocking in low or high sec.

The big problem with freighter ganking at the moment is that Concord is too powerful.

I write here as someone who has spent some time saving bump-tackled freighters and exacting revenge upon the gankers and their loot ships. I see that first responders to a bumped freighter often struggle to do much about the Machariel that's typically bump-tackling the freighter and have to wait around until the gank fleet turn up, only then can the defenders use logi, ECM etc. against the gank fleet (but not the tackler).

Freighters getting ganked from time to time is not the problem, its Concord defending the gankers that's the problem, and I'm going to tell you why.

While neutral logi may go suspect, bump-tackling ships carrying out the rather aggressive action of holding a ship face none of the consequences of their actions that every single other combatant does. This is the big inconsistent elephant in the room regarding freighter ganking - and its a pretty big elephant given the size of freighters!

As the bump-tackling ships are defended by Concord, this means that the only players that can typically engage with these Machariels are players who don't mind giving away a killright on themselves and losing their ship. Because of the killright, the only people who can get involved are those who don't live in hisec but yet somehow happen to be in the same hisec system at the time of the gank, or those who are prepared to create a hisec alt purely to reverse-gank Machariels. So we see that engagement with the Machariels is limited to a fairly small pool of players, which exacerbates the DPS floor that Concord's misguided defence places on prospective defenders (if you don't do enough DPS to the Machariel in X seconds, it survives).

In contrast we see a much wider pool of players using ECM, Logi etc in an attempt to save tackled freighters. These players would surely be interacting with the bumping ships if those tacklers weren't protected by Concord, which shows that Concord's zeal is reducing opportunities for player interaction.

Concord defending the Machariels is like the police turning up to a robbery and shooting the person who beat off the attacker instead of going after the thief.

As its perfectly possible to module-tackle a ship for hours on end, its completely consistent to be able to bump-tackle a ship for hours on end. CCP have proposed putting a limit on the amount of time for which any ship can be bumped. But as the fundamental issue with freighter bumping is not really the time that people can do it for, but that they can do it while defended by concord, I'm sad to say that CCP's proposal somewhat misses the mark. Concord should not be defending important participants in the gank. In fact if Concord did not defend the bump-tacklers, then we would find that the problem of freighters being held for hours (if it even is a problem) sorted itself out naturally via sandbox interactions.

What can we do about Concord's sympathies then? Bumping has various uses and consequences throughout the game, so any modifications to bumping in order to fix issues around freighters are likely to have consequences elsewhere. That's perhaps the main positive feature of CCP's 3m warp proposal.

However, the existence of other bump interactions outside freighter ganking means that the natural solution of making bump-tacklers go suspect might have too widespread an impact (even if it was technically feasible to decide who is the bumper and who is the bumpee).

An alternative change might be to make freighters more heavy, so that the effect of a bump on the freighter's speed and alignment would be lower, and it would take less time to recover from bumps. As this change only affects the a parameter of freighters, it may not have much effect on other parts of the game, which is an appealing property. However it wouldn't address the issue of tacklers being protected by Concord so the solution is flawed in the same way as the one that CCP has presented.

In conclusion, freighters getting ganked from time to time is not the problem, its Concord defending the tackler that's the problem and this needs to be resolved somehow for the good of the game.