Crimson Harvest: Flawed room progression rewards parasites and steals players' real lifetime

Events In Game Events
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Hello Fenris and community. I am writing this post to address a severe design flaw in the ongoing Crimson Harvest event (specifically regarding sites like the Tetrimon Base). The current room progression system actively rewards toxic, parasitic behavior while punishing players who actually engage with the PvE content.

This is not an isolated incident; it has become a widespread practice. Some players on expensive ships (like Marauders) choose not to actually play the game or complete the event challenges themselves. Instead, they wait and deliberately steal completed rooms from others.

Some might argue that “this is EVE, it’s about sandbox freedom.” But let’s look at the facts: these event sites already have strict rules and limitations implemented by design. You cannot access the second or third room without unlocking gates via keys or clearing NPC waves. The entry mechanics already restrict total freedom. So why do the rules protect the parasite who skips the work, but punish the player who clears the path?

When a player spends 30–40 minutes of their real-world time clearing the 1st and 2nd rooms in a standard ship, and an outsider simply slides into the 3rd room at the last second to steal the boss with superior Marauder DPS, it is not “emergent gameplay.” It is the theft of another player’s time and content. This is especially egregious in High-safety systems (High-sec), where the mechanics leave the victim with zero counterplay, as defending your own site results in instant destruction by CONCORD.

To make matters worse, the event rewards are already underwhelming and do not feel worth the immense effort. It feels like the team behind this event’s design is completely detached from the reality of how High-sec gameplay actually functions and how malicious players abuse these mechanics.

I have already raised this issue through player support. The GM team clarified that Customer Support has no tools to manually log or change gameplay design flaws and explicitly recommended sharing this feedback directly on the official forums so the development team can see it.

My proposals to fix this and future events:

  1. Lock the Progression Gates: Once a player (or fleet) activates and passes through an acceleration gate to the 2nd or 3rd room, that gate must lock completely for outsiders. If you didn’t do the hard work in the initial rooms, you should not be granted access to the finale.
  2. Introduce Gameplay Consequences (Suspect Timer): If a shortcut gate allows players to bypass rooms via a key, entering the final room while another player is already progressing through the standard path must have consequences. Anyone who intrudes into the 3rd room of an active site should automatically receive a Suspect/Criminal timer (turn red), allowing anyone to engage and destroy them without CONCORD intervention.

If EVE is about freedom, give us the freedom to legally defend our time and effort from parasites.

Thank you for reading, and I hope the development team reviews this feedback for future events.

2 Likes
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I think part of EVE’s design is that such conflict between players naturally occurs, which then creates situations where players can attack each other, which is the content in this game.

Keys in these sites allow players to quickly bypass the dangerous first room and immediately go to the final room, while hunters get left behind unless they have their own keys to then catch the ship doing the final room.

Where this goes wrong is that it feels like people in HS play an entirely different game than the rest of us. Instead of simply attacking people for taking your site (or fleeing when you cannot take them), the HS mechanics introduce all this ‘stealing’ gameplay because players are all protected by threats of CONCORD.

There never should be an option to lock gates behind you.

This means ships become untouchable and invulnerable in space, which is a no-go in a PvP game. Ships should be reachable if they are in space, so let’s look for a different solution, like your next one.

I think a suspect timer is indeed the better way to go! This is purely a HS problem and suspect timers are the way to tweak the balance of interactions in HS space.

The goal would be to make the dynamics more equal to the intended gameplay like everywhere else in the game, so no more evil stealing protected by CONCORD but simple straightforward fighting over your loot.

I suggest anyone who enters the final room goes suspect, that should make it possible to deal with thieves yourself.

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Exactly. Marauder pilots fly ships worth 1.5+ billion ISK. Right now, they only steal because they know they are 100% safe. If entering the final room triggered a Suspect timer, it wouldn’t just be about my Praxis fighting them. A Suspect flag in High-sec is a massive beacon for every ganker, combat scanner, and hunter in the region. These expensive Marauders would never risk their multi-billion ships for a single event loot container if it meant opening themselves up to legal PvP. The mere threat of a Suspect timer would stop this parasitism overnight.

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Sargon really got to you, huh?

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It’s not about one specific player, but thanks for bringing up a perfect example. The fact that certain individuals can make an entire career out of purely parasitizing other people’s time in High-sec just proves my point completely.

When the game design creates an artificial safety net where someone can bypass all the actual content, steal the reward under CONCORD’s protection, and leave the person who did the 30-minute work completely helpless — that’s a mechanical flaw, not “emergent PvP”.