CCPlease: Add hauler ganking to the NPE

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Sorry for the reddit link.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/75u3ew/ccplease_add_hauler_ganking_to_the_npe/

We’ve all snacked on popcorn while reading sob-stories of people losing T1 loot-pinatas off the Jita undock. I imagine the people that die to Tornadoes can be divided into two groups; Ones that knowingly take the risk, die quietly, and move on with life. And the people that have never thought about the economics of ganking, and subsequently cry about it in Local, the forums, and /r/eve.

Nothing wrong with Group 1. They’re not risk-averse, and they provide content to others. Group 2 could be helped with some simple hands-on learning. I think there needs to be a mission in the NPE, or the Career Agents, where you’re tasked with searching for one large and important object hidden in a convoy of NPC haulers.

Any aggression by the player results in everything on grid tackling you, and the inevitable popping of your ship. This should happen regardless of whether you shoot the correct hauler or not. Basically, a simulation of Concord mechanics. Then you have to come back with your own T1 hauler to loot the wreck and give hand it in to the agent. Not exactly a simulation of Concord mechanics, but you can’t force newbies to work together (encourage sure, force no).

The granted items for this mission would need to be:

  • 1x cargo scanner
  • 1x racial gankship
  • 1x racial hauler
    The reward for this mission needs to be more than the cost of the ship you lose.

TLDR: Teach new players that highsec ganking is a thing by making them do a pretend version of it in a mission. Ship-loss is part of the process. Pay them for their troubles.

All credit belongs to /u/Chocolate_pickle. Great name, btw!

The simulation of CONCORD seems unnecessary to me, as real CONCORD can easily do the job as hard coded reaction to the player shooting a specific npc hauler, but that’s all that bothers me. An addition i’d see possible, would be an npc cargo scanner who moves the new player around highsec (you have to follow him not to fail the mission) until “a worthy hauler” (which is an npc) is found.

the 1600m³ cargo magnate would be one of them.

And now I’d want to know what you think of this. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

3 Likes
2

The players already make it a part of the NPE

3

thank you for this informative and insightful one-liner, which stands on his own so well, it doesn’t even need punctuation.

4

Why pay them? Gankers don’t get paid for their ganks (remember: You do not receive insurance for criminal actions). If you really want to teach them ganking, you need to teach them that they are responsible for getting their spoils before someone else does, ie. have an alt ready to scoop and run. Or better even 2 alts because one goes suspect by scooping the spoils and the other runs unbothered if you do a star gate gank and not a station gank.

And why does the reward need to be more than the cost of the ships they lose? The gank happens on a potential chance of sufficient amounts of the spotted loot dropping, not a guarantee that the ganker gets the loot. Introducing the new player to ganking in a way that teaches them that they can expect full piñatas and reimbursement when they do criminal actions is not going to make them good gankers.

Also, people should be shown this video instead of such a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySxQ65o6lHA

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Are you a ganker?

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I have ganked in the past. https://zkillboard.com/kill/33811488/

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Nono. Not a drone. An actual ganker, maybe with scanning/looting alt and solo kills. For context would haulers be great. How do i sort zKill for solo kills? could swear the Solo button wasn’t there in mobile.

8

I have been on the receiving end of such ganks if that counts. Do you want to insinuate something in particular?

9

I used to be active in code before they changed from pretend crazy to real crazy and rivr is right. Teaching them that they can expect any loot at all let alone enough to cover your ship won’t make them better gankers. Overall there is still 0 need for them to spend dev time on this. The concept of ganking is one new players come across naturally pretty early on

1 Like
10

Well, guys, thanks for your well thought out opinions.

What’s actually correct, though, is that people can and will learn to not only find targets themselves, but also how to hunt, how to stay patient, and how it can pay off bigtime finding the right one. Incentivizing people with the chance on big loot is far less random than doing, say, exploration, or these ingame events with varying drops.

But hey, let’s not apply the same logic that applies to the rest of the game to this. :slight_smile:

Let’s not have CCP teach them interesting, thrilling gameplay done by thousands before us, if that’s what you want. :slight_smile:

11

In that case should ccp also do a tutorial on market manipulation, contact scams, margin scams, WH eviction and moon mining?

All of this are not only more profitable than ganking but more consistent

12

You can’t make an action against another player part of the NPE, it’s just not consistent enough. A new player could go an entire week without seeing a target they can gank before CONCORD kills them and at a profit.

If you create a scripted scenario to teach players the basics then you’ve also given them a false impression of how ganking actually works, and really there’s no way to avoid that when you tell players “go gank someone” as part of a tutorial.

More than that though you’re trying to teach an entirely emergent behavior (ganking for profit isn’t intrinsic to the Eve mechanics, it’s a byproduct of them) that the vast majority of players will never engage in over their Eve careers to the basic tutorial. That strikes me as kind of against the spirit of Eve in general and ganking in particular, not to mention not particularly necessary.

13

These are great points!

But if CCP doesn’t teach it, and currently ganking is on an all time low, shouldn’t it be promoted as a nice side activity? Would you agree that there should be at least some way for them learning it, instead of ganking haulers, or as a whole, forever staying a niche activity until it dies completely?

Weeks without a nice hauler is a stretch, btw. Ganking haulers can be profitable pretty quickly, doing it in a destroyer or a cruiser. doesn’t need billions of isk in loot for that. :slight_smile:

14

it does if you also count the time it takes and compare it to how much you could be making in that same time. any isk not gained is the same as isk lost

15

This is pretty much conjecture on your part, unless the first letter of every other sentence of that reddit thread hides a link to some stats. A quick look at the zKill records for Uedama and Niarja shows, rather unsurprisingly, a lot of dead haulers and even more dead gank ships so I’m not really sure where this is coming from.

Generally? No, CCP shouldn’t be promoting things to do in the game, the NPE is for learning the basics of the actual mechanics, like how to shoot, get shot, lose ships, haul, interact with the market and NPCs, and things like that. It shouldn’t be pushing people towards one area of gameplay or another except in the most general fashion.

Why is this even remotely needed? I can go out and do one level 4 missions in about 10 minutes and earn enough for anywhere between 2 and 10 gank catalysts depending on mission and some other factors, or I can run Incursions for 2 hours and buy a few hundred of the things.

Then there are guides and resources out there for the aspiring ganker, not to mention people that could be asked in-game, on the forums, and elsewhere.

I’m not saying that “weeks” is the expected case for every user, just that it’s not really outside the realm of possibility, especially if the player doesn’t know where to set up or doesn’t play during a very active timezone. That’s why the NPE never has you go out and shoot other players for anything else.

The emphasis in my “can kill and be profitable” thing was more on the “can kill” side of things, since a new player who is still doing the tutorial will do around 30% less damage before CONCORD shows up, even less if they’re the wrong race or use the wrong ship, and the only real way for them to increase that substantially in a hurry is to buy a more expensive ship.

On the whole there are better uses of the average newbie’s time and energy than learning to gank unless that’s something they really really wanna do in Eve, and if they do they don’t need the tutorial pushing them towards it.

16

idk. people say ganking is apart of eve, and sure it is, but it’s still discouraged by the game’s mechanics. that’s why i’d say ganking is at an all time low. killing off CODE members through bans also probably doesn’t help, if those sources were up to date.

17

And yet w-space carebears call it “pvp”. Or people that fit much neuts on a Sin, which is indeed a sin and cyno themselves to call it “solo”. You know, an action that needs at least 2 accounts.

Or other life forms with magic credit cards that call “solo” logging in 13976026786780678024578570572652745 accounts and input-broadcast the FONE button and then “brag” about how their cheat account numbers can press FONE at the same time.

18

Do you ever try reading what you type before you actually post it, just to see if it flows correctly and makes sense?

19

Yes, because the other 99% of the game couldn’t function effectively if ganking was free, easy, and unpunished.

Also, again, that whole “ganking is at an all time low” thing needs a source attached with some stats or it’s so much hot air. Also I can find nothing about any sort of mass-ban of all or even some of CODE’s members except for one instance from over a year ago where 20 players were banned for screwing with CONCORD per CCP, which isn’t a ganking ecosystem problem it’s a dumb players problem.

20

it’s also encouraged by the games mechanics… what’s your point?

the game mechanics discourages ratting and mining outside of HS and at the same time reward it. just like with ganking. it’s called balance risk/reward, give and take, pros and cons ect

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