EVE General Discussion

Indeed.

Everyone can quibble from now until the end of time about whether ganking was easier or harder over the long lifetime of this game. Everything is constantly changing in the virtual universe that is New Eden, both mechanically and in terms of player behaviour and fashion. But I think almost all of us, except for a few radical absolutists, can agree that freighters were always intended to be attackable in highsec, just like everything else player built is intended to be destoyable by other players. Whether the threshold to shoot a freighter profitably is 500M or 10B, there will be such a number determined by the highsec crime mechanics for which you can make ISK by killing another player, and whether you require 5 people or 50 in your group to do, there will be some amount of players who can interdict and destroy a cargo ship carrying the goods of other players. This is undeniably intended and confirmed by generations of CCP developers as how the game is suppose to work.

This is completely irrespective of "risk" or "difficulty" of shooting other players faced by the criminals. Making interesting gameplay around criminal activity should be a goal and there is certainly much that can be done with this idea, but isn't required. Ganking, and wardecs, are there as the mechanisms by which players can interact with each other in highsec. Full stop. They are they as player-controlled sources of risk to the other players. If some players are unable or unwilling to defend themselves in space (or bring risk to the players who are trying to attack them), then they are intended to lose their ships and their stuff. If you sit in an untanked retriever in lowsec and walk away from your keyboard you will lose it in short order. There is no risk (and only a tiny cost of sec status and ammo) to the lucky hunter who finds your ship and kills you and gets your stuff. In highsec, there is an enforced cost to any attacker which will deter most attacks, especially if you keep the value of what you fly below what the game mechanics makes profitable, but otherwise it is exactly the same. If you don't take steps to defend yourself, you will eventually lose that ship to someone who objects to your resource gathering.

I am sympathetic to players who feel they cannot defend themselves in highsec, but it simply isn't true. There are literally a dozen counters to having your ship ganked, and an instant and 100% effective one for getting out of a war. Yes, we can all argue balance issues about how vulnerable we should all be to each other and how much effort players should have to take to defend themselves, but the core idea of the game is that we should all be vulnerable to each other and we are and always will be. CONCORD is a terrible mechanic for encouraging escalation but it works in that losing your ship to another player is a very rare thing, and probably next to impossible for a player who takes active steps to protect themselves like say they would operating in lowsec.

The complaint behind most of these threads (including this one) is not that it is too hard to defend your stuff, but that the OP thinks he shouldn't have to defend himself at all. Well he is wrong. He is very much intended to defend himself. There will never be a place in Eve where he can mine 100% safely while doing his laundry, let alone run a corporation in complete safety.

As to freighter ganking, I think the whole thing is a little absurd. Freighters (and other capitals) should never have been allowed to be piloted by players in the NPC corp as CCP was once considering. Their massive wall of EHP doesn't mesh well with the CONCORD mechanics, and it is silly that it takes dozens of players to contest one, while me and a handful of friends can try to destroy a whole space station by ourselves. The whole DPS race against such a large wall just breaks down as there is by definition a huge imbalance in the sides and no time for much player action to influence the battle either way. That is a result of the abnormally long development time frame of development of the game, and trying to balance mechanics across multiple spaces, so I accept we have what we have. Freighters still die (albeit very rarely as a fraction of their use) in highsec, and will always keep dying, and if they ever stop dying CCP will nerf them until they start dying again. I don't see any problem here.

I'd love CCP to spend a development cycle or two revamping Crimewatch and making criminal and war mechanics more player controlled in highsec building in more opportuniy for players to counter and re-counter each other and influence the fight, but if CCP can't even find the time to iterate on the war mechanics in the last five years, I don't see any reasonable chance that the even more niche activity of highsec criminal mechanics are going to get a serious look at again any time soon if ever. Maybe something will come out at Fanfest and prove me wrong.

lorewise Empires do not care about our (capsuleers) stuff. CONCORD just limits our shenanigans and reminds us of who are real power in high-sec.

The people that pvp are not the ones the have and still do demand the removal of other people's gameplay and content.

See this here, It's all about perception. We all have different perspectives. Some people want the game very difficult, and some people want it very easy.

I for one am happy to play the game how ever CCP choose to design it for they are the carrot holder and we are the donkies. I am not qualified to design a game mechanic, sure ill give my opinion but I wont push it too hard.

The game IS designed to be Game of Thrones in space and we should accept this and find loopholes in whatever the current mechanics are in order to get ahead.

There is a very real difference between you choosing to not do something because you fear other players and people not being able to do something because the mechanics were changed to make it impossible.

No, it absolutely is NOT...

Want to avoid gankers - pay someone else to haul, or even mine.....

Want to avoid Wardecs - drop to NPC Corp.

It's that simple.

No they decide to victimise themselves. The mechanics do not stop you from hauling, they do not stop you from mining, it's entirely your choice.

The mechanics do however stop piracy on miners because of changes made in the last few years. An entire profession was wiped out simply because carebears whined endlessly while choosing to not fit a tank that would have made them unprofitable to gank.

So....have people finished having the exact same argument thats been going back and forth for over a decade yet?

At its heart this argument is and always has been about two opposing viewpoints, some people think they shouldn't have to have what they perceive as limits placed on their game play by other players and some people think they should be able to play the game in the way they feel it has been put forward by the developers without having to care about what anyone else thinks.

Personally I come down more on the pro ganking side, simply because I agree with the argument that what the developers have always said they intended the game to be is more important than a few players slightly bruised feelings, however I can understand the reasoning behind the other sides arguments even if i dont agree with it.

Of course the situation isnt helped when theres a substantial part of both sides that arent interested in actually having a discussion and just prefer to troll threads by spouting hyperbole, arguing in bad faith and refusing to even try and understand the opposing viewpoints. I'm also going to reserve a special hell for those idiots who play the 'If you act badly in a game then you're a bad person in real life' card, because not only is it a bullshit argument in the first place but its chronically missing the point.

I know this post isn't going to change anything and likely as not I'll be reading a whole new iteration of the same damn thing in a few weeks anyway but i felt it had to be said.

The only problem is that most of those who come here to whine for "moar protection" can't fight back, because they are scared shitless about the fact that fighting back could end in losing one of their ships.
They're so scared to lose a ship, they're almost like a rabbit in front of a rattlesnake, paralyzed by the fear of losing a ship and ruining their precious Isk/hr ratio.
That's the real reason why they are whining, biatching and moaning in the forums, because they don't have the guts to fight back.
Let the others do it!
CCP do something!
Me?
Why should I do something?
I already whined about it at the forums!

That's it, simple as that!

Bullshit.

They first victimised by themseves wanting that 100% comfy carebear space so bad in a space that cannot, and WILL NOT, provide it to them.

Sorry.

Door's that way.

Id rather see the game burning itself down to the ground as is than becoming yet another kiddie's playground.