Sec status you can buy these days and kill rights are not a very easy mechanism to use for escalation.
And this is my point. I am not arguing getting rid of the possibility to gank someone. Since I was not explicit enough above, let me put it more directly: I can, I have, and I will gank folks myself. I want to keep on doing that, thank you very much. I am also in a war-dec eligible corporation, as you can easily confirm. This is not about me being afraid to lose ■■■■.
My point is that if you engage in PvP, you should be open to other people not just doing a gank back, but also escalating. I am arguing for less a safe game, not more.
Well, as a basic goal I am all for it. I am not sure though how things can escalate if you make it impossible for a a large class of players to even engage in PvP by locking out their safety settings. I’d rather not see the game create two classes of players - ones that are only prey items because they cannot shoot another player in highsec, and ones who can.
It seems tough from a game design perspective to design a system where players have both the freedom to disengage or avoid fights, and force them and this has been an eternal struggle with this game since the beginning. Given you want people to actually play, not dock up or log out, I think we are stuck with evasion as such a key strategy in everyone’s tool kit and will have to deal with this. You can still bait, or trick or ambush like everywhere else in this game to get a fight.
I think you are exaggerating there. Being unable to gank if you are not open to escalation does not mean you are “unable to engage in PvP”. There’s plenty of small-scale PvP available in low sec, against flashy targets, etc, that is accessible with yellow safety.
And yes, it is a tough balance and likely there’s no perfect solution.
Personally I feel there’s three big issues with the current opt-in mechanics. One is what I am talking about: ganking is a little too safe, there should be an escalation mechanism of some sort. (My take is that if you gank, you implicitly agree with me that the game should not be safe, so it should also not be safe for you.)
Another is that currently wardec costs only take into account the size of the target - not the attacker. I feel it should be fairly cheap for a small outfit to wardec a much bigger one. Wardec cost should depend on the relative sizes of the involved parties. This would make it possible for new people entering into PvP to create a target-rich environment and take on bigger prey.
A third issue is corp-hopping to dodge decs. This issue was made worse by the fact that you can dodge into a non-wardec eligible player corp, allowing basically anyone to choose on a day-by-day basis if they want to be involved in one of their wars or not. That’s a little too much opt-out.
EDIT: to also say something positive, I think the wardec eligibility thing has forced “blanket wardec alliances” to let go of a lot of “easy mode prey” and look for other opportunities. My hunch is that there has been a spike up in low-sec gate camping since the mechanic change, because that has become an appealing way to find explosions. I like that. It makes the game a little safer for newbies and pure industrials, yes, but I think that’s is a fine exchange for making lowsec a tad more exciting again. (This is hunch from spending a lot of my time in low sec, not data, obvs. So I might be mistaken.)
Ganking isn’t safe at all. You always lose your ship. It’s a safe as anyone is who only flies around in disposable ships - don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose and all. I’ll agree it lacks opportunity for escalation, but no one is safe in this game.
Tying the crime mechanic to a corp mechanic has the same problem with people wanting to add a structure that ends the war - it give too much power to the largest groups. They can dictate who can play the game by locking you out of features or mechanics. I’m fine with the biggest dog calling the shots, but they should have to do something to flex their power, not have safety handed to them just for the fact they have the most people and can win any single fight and turn off the ability of others to attack them. They are the last ones that need free mechanical safety like that.
I don’t know what the answer is, but probably if there is one it lies the other way, with making all players more open to interactions with each other rather than adding more limits and rules. Make everyone more open to interactions and then you can use that freedom to go after the criminal that annoyed you, but as we agree this is easier said that implemented.
You keep on repeating that “no one is safe in this game” as some kind of a mantra. Please note that I have not argued that anyone should be completely safe in this game, and also ganking is not completely safe obviously. My problem is the lack of escalation, and I am glad we agree on that.
Like you said, it is a balance, of course. My idea was aimed at encouraging people to be open to interactions - if you want to gank, dive full way in to the pvp pool, not just dip your toes into it. But I can see how that could be seen as a limiting rule, too.
I stopped making suggestions on what CCP needs to do long ago because it really does not help. Everybody will always have a baised opinion. Is it maybe not time just to let it be and see what happens and how EVE turns out.
My content creation days are over. I am just having fun forcing people to loose structures or pay. Good times. Fighting on the forums about the glory days of EVE PVP wont bring it back. The next generation of EVE players are just different… I now just try and produce salt and scam isk out of them.
Can’t imagine why they seem different when they keep getting targeted by well established vets…
It’s not like they are getting a vastly different game experience to shape them.
While I fully agree with the changes, I must note that the mechanics is currently so broken, that it is actually impossible to destroy any structure in high-sec. Any structure owner can exploit bugs in the system to dodge any war dec on them. Unless these bugs are fixed, the whole system is useless.
It’s called an ‘inversion bug’. The corp can become the aggressor in the war (instead of the defender) by exploiting this bug. Since the corp is the aggressor, it can end the war before the next timer. And since you need then again 24 hours to make a new war active, you can’t kill the structure. We have seen this exploit now a couple of times. And there is not much you can do against it.
They probably cannot change it in any trivial means, because if you cannot do that, you could force someone to never leave an alliance by keeping on reinforcing their structures?
Sure, nobody wants that. But the war should return to it’s previous state. Or at the very least this should be declared an exploit. Because this is just silly. We already had 6 structures saved this way.
