EVE General Discussion

so everyone should stop doing what they do to make way for the newest snowflake to arrive expecting to be the hero of the universe within a few weeks.

but what if there is activities happening that require all targets entering a system to be killed on sight?

should they hold off on their operations?

as for your CCP made the game broken on purpose to keep numbers down statement,, wow.

So now it's OP's fault?

A few pages ago it was "maybe there are good reasons that some (perhaps many) new players don't bother with low/null-sec".

If it's always the new players' fault you will all surely achieve your apparent objective of reducing their numbers as fast as possible.


0.5-0.4 gate camping is game-legal but it's quite hostile towards new players. The kind of players that don't know how to check for a gate camp - and perhaps haven't really understood the nature of the 0.5-0.4 interface. Most new players have never even seen a Concord kill. They're not rich enough to be suicide ganked. They've probably been exposed to solo players looking to "steal" loot from low-level missions, but that can be handled easily (e.g. you can just leave and do another mission). So at first glance it seems that 0.4 should be just a little less safe than 0.5.


Just one time, old timers, try to see what that Gate Camp looks like to a newbie ...

-... it appears that a bunch of experienced players have got together solely to grief newbies. Comparable to some lowlife stealing the mission items from L1 missions: game-legal, but most of us would never choose to play with such a person. And not an isolated incident or a lone scumbag either. It's a reasonably large, well-organized gang, with the implication that the trash are more effective at teaming up than the (very elusive) "nice" EVE players.

It's an interesting perspective - both 100% true (the location in question is very hostile to inexperienced players) and partly false (if you know enough it's easy to plan around it).


The problem for the game isn't to do with CCPs objectives, game rules, or what a skilled/experienced player would do. It's that one more newbie has had a (partially true) insight that EVE is ruled by "fun vampires" - players that get their fun by making others' play less enjoyable - and that perhaps the kind of people they'd like to play with are a small, elusive minority.

They certainly won't find any evidence to the contrary among the victim-blamers here.

What's the point of this post? Misdirection?

To someone who'd like to see more players join EVE, and a higher proportion of those that join stay, OP's post looks like useful data about new players' perceptions of the gaming experience.

Blame allocation in any direction seems pointless (even mine above). If there's a question worth discussing, it's "how can new players be encouraged to do things that are likely to lead to their subscribing and/or staying longer?". From that perspective, every suggestion, even naive ones, and any complaint like this one (basically OP said he really didn't like the Gate Camp that was interfering with his gaming session) provides useful insight.

Does it make more sense to use it as a lesson, or to just rationalize it away?

In my experience, denial of the facts by the establishment rarely leads to the best outcomes. Nor does running after every new suggestion or data point of course. But this thread is far from the "happy medium".

You seem to assume that new players are the intended target of the gate camps.
Fact is, you aren't, new players aren't really worth killing, its the veteran players, the ones who might have gotten lazy, or made a mistake, or just not payed enough attention, who are the real targets of gate camps. new players are just collateral damage.
and they are only collateral damage because we can't actually tell right away if you are new or a vet.

so we give you the benefit of the doubt, treat you like we would treat anyone else, lock and open fire. and that isn't even always the case. I have been part of gate camps where we intentionally let someone go, because someone in the camp managed to pull up their profile and noticed they where new, (we kept them locked in place and gave them a bit of an on the spot lesson about gate camps, but let them go in the end)
and i've also known people who reimbursed new players for their gate camp losses when the newbie asked some good and honest questions about it. and most importantly, didn't whine like some sort of entitled **** about it.

Yes it is the OP's fault if they get caught, it is the newbies fault for getting caught, just like its the vets fault if they get caught. eve treats everyone the same, and doesn't handhold or coddle anyone. gate camps are not a new phenomenon, gankers are not new either. you either learn from your mistakes and you grow, or, frankly, your not going to make it in this game anyways.

I remember when I started back in 2008, I'd heard a rumor from... somewhere... can't even remember who it was from, that apparently shuttles sold pretty well out in null-sec. now I knew NOTHING about null sec, or even low-sec for that matter besides that they where more dangerous than high-sec... i'd also heard from multiple people that "its not as bad as you keep hearing, you will be fine, etc"

so I sold all of the ore that I had mined over the first week of playing, that i'd mined in my little mining frigate (that we now call the probe) bought as many shuttles as I could afford, and loaded them up into the t1 industrial (a wreathe I think it was) that I had poured what little isk I had into buying. set a course out to null sec and away I went.

somehow made it through low-sec without any problems, a small miracle that, especially since this was back when the "jump" button would actually drop you the same distance from a gate that the auto-pilot did. (you had to press warp to zero first, and then jump on contact if you wanted it to work the way it does now) So I just auto-piloted my way ignorantly through low.

first jump into null though, I had these weird bubbles i'd never seen surrounding me, and my warp drive didn't work, next thing I knew I was in a pod, with someone convoing me and offering me a bounty for my pod. Now I was probably a bit saltier than I should have been over the loss, or I could likely have learned more than I did. but having just lost literally everything I had except for my mining frigate, I told him just to pod me and get it over with.

yeah I was angry, and yeah I walked away from the game for about a week after that happened... but then I got back to it, and I learned from my mistakes (although not well enough since I continued mining in high-sec for the next 3 or 4 years) but I quickly realized that 99.99% of ship losses in eve are completely avoidable. yeah, I might not have the greatest looking killboard, but I've made it a point to learn from each loss. and that is why I am still around 9 years later.

and i'm willing to bet that damn near every single other pilot in the game has a similar story from somewhere in their eve career. so why would you want to rob yourself and other new players of that shared experience? and that learning opportunity? what is it worth? a million isk ship and its cargo?

plenty of pirates pay money for newbies who lost something and give advice, as ive already explained before getting criticised for trying to justify what i do as "white knighting".

for someone who cant even read a littered up overview with warnings of "GATECAMP AHEAD" it then falls into the victim being totally lazy, would you swim in shark infested water when signs are all over the beach saying "SHARKS ARE IN THE WATER DO NOT SWIM"?

you have to realise that not every "new" player is actually a new player.

@gatecampers - hold the ship on the gate so they can light a cyno and bring a capital fleet in while you check all the chars details to see if the player is new. gg

you dont hear the nice comments and polite people because only the salty come to the forums to tell people the game is broken and let everyone know they are leaving because the nasty pirate killed them. i have plenty of mails from players asking for advice.

It has always been stressed in eve that the best way to learn the game is to convo whoever you fight to find out what you done wrong. this is no different than the vet in a linked garmur with pirate implants killing the 3 day old kestrel in a plex.

doesnt matter what you suggest people will still die no matter how much you change the game to molly cuddle new players

I didn't mean "haven't seen in the forum" - in fact I have seen a couple of posts about "nice" gankers here. I meant talking to other players.

As for talking to someone who's ganked me - it would depend on the context. So far this time around I've only been killed by people I'd never voluntarily communicate with, regardless of how much they might know. I suspect this is by far the most likely case with new players - I've certainly heard multiple stories from people who've been killed by griefers, but none who\ve met a "nice pirate".

I could also do without that claim about "molly coddling" or similar stuff. Read Bjorn Tyrson's story a few posts up (about losing most of his EVE "net worth" on arriving unsuspecting in nullsec).

Old-timer vs new player ganks are wildly asymmetrical. One side might well be risking a week or two's grinding, while the other knows in advance they have a huge advantage in the fight, and/or are risking just a few minutes of grinding.

Find a way to balance the risk and we can talk about making things easy for new players. Right now, it's easy-mode for the gankers, and much harder for the new players than anything the old-timers face regularly.

Its not possible.

There is always a bigger, or more predatory fish, or a fish with more evolutionary advantages compared to your own, or a situation, or a number of them, in this ocean that means the weak, poorly adapted, surprised/unknowing/isolated etc will die first and are at greatest risk.

EVE is funny in that way, and balanced.

When you start, your resources and capacity are low and limited, but so are your costs and investment.
Yes, it is true in EVE, that the more established you get, the more you learn etc, the safer you are and the more options you have.
But the learning curve and nature of risk is such in EVE, that you can never escape the fact that you are still, always, vulnerable, and there is always more to learn, bigger fish, smarter fish, fish with better adaptations, more numbers, or situational advantage like surprise.

This meta and paradigm, remains constant throughout EVE, and throughout the life cycle of any player in EVE.

There is no escaping it.
It absolutely applies to everyone, always.

I promise you this.
EVE NEVER gets easier.
No matter how new or how old you are.

New players cant even fathom the complexities of risk older established players take on a daily basis.

CCP, other players can hurt me, pls fix this.

Furthermore, it cannot be overstated how important it is to remember this is a GAME.

You musnt take a loss as a personal issue.

Yes, it hurts like hell, but in 99.9%% of losses, its YOUR OWN FAULT.
(0.1% allowing for occasional unfortunate game glitches)

That is the single hardest thing to swallow and internalize in this game.
That is the EVE pill.

Back in the military, the hardest pill for me to swallow and internalize, was that Im part of a unit in a chain of command.
At first I thought this was oppressive, personal and cruel.
Then I realized, it is for real and extremely important reasons upon which my own survival depends.
That pill made me stronger, better and I endured and succeeded, and so did my unit.

Its the same with the EVE pill.
If you take a loss in EVE, its nobodies fault but your own.
You need to internalize that. Understand it. Accept it.
Swallowing that pill make you a far better player in EVE, with far more potential.

When you take a loss, your opponent simply played their cards better than you.
Its a game. They beat you, because you made mistakes. Get better.

If you rant at your aggressors, you will only feed them salt.
If you are respectful, and remember this is a game we are all a part of, anything is possible.