As we all know, player conflict is the engine that drives EVE’s economy and gameplay. Highsec is where most players spend their time, however, there has been nerf after nerf to conflict there. Some proposals to improve highsec from a bitter 2010 canflipper:
Reinstate limited engagement flag for taking from suspect’s container. Fighting over stolen items was once a highsec staple. The Crimewatch system as it is simply removes this source of conflict. We should add some of it back. To that end…
Remove ore bays from everything except haulers. Edit based on feedback: Reduce barge ore bays to a capacity of not more than one cycle. Remove mining ability from the Orca entirely. Barges and Orcas sitting afk in belts for hours accumulating ore should not be a thing. Ore cans were an interaction and conflict driver. Bring them back.
Use a metric other than ‘owns an upwell structure’ to determine which corps are wardeccable. Size, net worth, something. As it is, it’s absurdly easy to shelter assets from wardecs. Furthermore, the highsec PVE corp that bores its members out of the game while exploiting them with buyback programs is something we should be actively discouraging.
Keep MTUs from being pulled in or accessed for 1 minute after being shot. As they are, the conflict around MTUs is completely optional. Make it mandatory.
That’s it, take it or leave it. Ten years ago, I never thought I’d post on the forums, let alone make one of these bittervet posts, but here we are.
The ore bay isn’t the thing that prevents can farming. Only the ‘Triever and Mack’ even have an ore bay worth a damn. The ore bay doesn’t exist to increase ore storage. It exists as a nerf to primary cargo, so mining ships that need to accommodate laser cycles can’t instead be used to haul.
If you remove ore bay you have to give those ships a lot of primary cargo instead, and then those primary cargos are significantly more useful than an ore bay because, for example, the Procurer/Skiff is now essentially the best tanked, most combat-bonused cargo ship in the game.
The ore bay is essential, because of the restriction it has on what it can store. It doesn’t exist as a convenience. The ore bay is an existing nerf and it’s an important one.
HORRIBLE idea for so many, many, many, many, many quite obvious reasons I’m not going to bother listing them all. This proposal severely diminishes ops and the utility of these ships without increasing the conflict you so desire
Absolutely not!!!
Carebears deserve a safe space if they want to be immune to wardecs. They should not be penalized based on size (esp if alts are involved) or EVE’s horrible “estimated value” evaluation system, etc. The existing system is very straightforward. If you want to PVP, there’s no shortage of groups that are PVPable. Go to lowsec/nullsec. Suicide gank in hisec or wardec groups that are already wardeccable - there’s no shortage of those. You don’t HAVE to PVP those who don’t want to PVP and hide behind war immunity mechanics.
You can add to this “MTUs stop tractoring when attacked for 1 minute”
I agree the suspect flag has spoiled things but limited engagements don’t work like the old aggro flag. A limited engagement allows shooting both ways. What you’re asking for is the plain old aggro mechanics back, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
An orca needs an ore bay for decent mining support and barges are not afk for hours. Even a mack tops out at about 30 minutes and they are not hard to gank. Nerf orca mining yield is all we need right now. Skiff/proc tank got nerfed in surgical strike, so wait and see how that goes first.
Indeed it was a terrible idea to tie wardec eligibility to structure’s. Make any corp with an office war eligible and deactivate the corp wallet for any corp that doesn’t have an office. Voila social corps. Oh, and lower the dec fees ffs. I agree some corps are exploiting new bros but didn’t think ore/salvage buy-backs was exploiting new players though. Surely everyone benefits from not paying market fees and sale taxes.
You have some rose coloured glasses on here. The reality was that people who knew anything didn’t fight over this under the old mechanics, it was just about baiting people who didn’t know better.
Removing this mechanic did not kill any significant amount of conflict.
Structures can no longer be taken down at will, so how so sheltered?
People are free to move anywhere so if they are staying in high sec it’s a choice, and you don’t think null corporations don’t “buy back” at reduced prices, that’s silly to believe that.
People still fill cans in space, you obviously don’t get around enough, you are still free to steal from a can which will make you suspect, so what’s changed, nothing, you forget about mining frigates, should they also lose their ore bays and become the new primae?
This still exists, now what, you are asking for things that exist or are just not as you seem to be posting, they have made pvp easier with duels so why not partake?
I’ll concede the point on the Orca, since it’s meant for coordinated mining ops. However, barges should have to interact with a hauler, Orca, or jetcan every few cycles, just as they used to. Leaving out the issues of reduced conflict in passively mining for thirty minutes before flying back to a station, mining barges as they are have bonuses to both mining and hauling ore, which takes away the hauler’s old role in mining; I would rather see barges bonused for mining only and more options added for haulers (ice hauler, or a set of hauler-only mods to add bays, for instance).
That is exactly the choice miners should have to make: yield or cargo capacity, not both.
If they didn’t fight, they made a choice to cede those items. Now, they simply take them back without any effort. And people did indeed fight under the old system. I remember miners often escalating with combat ships; I even had to run away a few times. Sometimes, the miners even stole from and fought each other (imagine that!).
Imagine that! Newbs exist!
If you steal now it’s not taking back with no effort, they have to attack you, unless you are a newb and simply give the items back… hence suspect baiting.
Miners already have to make that choice. If you want cargo you sacrifice yield. The old way was the Hulk was the best of everything, not that there was a choice.
Honestly, you have built this picture in your head of ‘how it used to be’ that doesn’t match reality at all, you have this imaginary idea about how EVE used to be and how it is now, and you are quite simply wrong in both.
All he is after, is CCP to make more changes that can be abused against people not aware of them.
This is not conflict drivers, this is just making a game worse. There is a conflict when there is something to fight for ; seal clubbing is not conflict driver, it’s just abusing over complex mechanism that other people have not learnt yet.
There is no conflict driver in HS when there is nothing to fight for. If you want conflict driver in HS, make it worth fighting - meaning you realistically can win more by fighting than just by doing something else.
You already have FW as a conflict driver, in HS.
If you try to force conflict on people, without a reward, then people will just leave. THAT is the reality, forcing activities on people is just a deterrent to the game.
That’s a nonsense. People are more vulnerable in low/null, yet what they do first is making themselves less vulnerable.
Only when they have a bad vision of the game. That only works with noobs, who have no insight of the game. Once they learn about it, they are just gonna say “go on” and stop making you able to steal it - or just stop playing because this is a negative value game. In the end all you have is the ability to bully newbros.
Just adding terms like “reduced conflict” doesn’t make your point make sense.
There’s plenty of conflict for people mining in Mackinaws (the ones with large holds). Check the kill boards. Second only in ganking priority to the Hulk.
So miners do make that choice now. They trade off convenience against risk. All the time.
All you want is to bully newbros with can flipping. And that’s not even a conflict driver. 27km3 is what, maybe 6 mil isk in high sec ores? Why would anyone fight over that? The only targets you’ll get from that behaviour is newbies that haven’t learned better yet.
Very few used to fight pet a flipped can. Can flipping was widely considered an acceptable loss by miners. Ever since the early days of single laser badgers.
You’re using the word conflict like it is justification in itself, but not only are you only ever looking to punch down, but you’re not even being honest about it.
It’s just logical.
If people can’t ensure their activity, they just stop it. There is no point in playing if you have no sense of achievement.
No it’s not. The question is not if people would have left anyhow. The question is, what is the impact of making people lose more stuff ? And the answer is : it makes them stop the game.
They don’t offer anything, but the feeling of a bad game. In the end the result is the same : people will know about the mechanics and won’t fall to it ; or people will not know, and either learn a stupid mechanic, or leave the game. Only baby seals will fall for this.
All you want is baby clubbing .
That’s the issue with overcomplex mechanisms : people who are correctly aware of them can abuse them against people who are not. in the end only people not aware of them fall for them, and it makes the game look stupid and over complexified for the sole reason to help vets abuse newbros.
That is not the suggestion, the suggestion is just to remove the ore bay so that players have to move the ore. Right now having the ore go directly to the ore hold is the ENABLER for AFK mining.
This is a mild suggestion, most people want Orca to lose it’s mining ability altogether.
People are not logical though. Obviously people have tried to engage thieves and obviously not just new players or people who didn’t understand mechanics.
As for a sense of achievement, defeating a would be thief is obviously a sense of achievement. Getting revenge on a ganker does to. I can tell you that from personal experience.
No that isn’t the question. Or eve would remove loss entirely. And there is no evidence to suggest that was ever the case.
The question is what makes people play the game more? And we’ve come up with the notion of agency, emotional investment and personal relationships.
If players that are going to leave the game from getting suspect baited, or whatever, are going to leave anyways because of whatever other reason, then that is obviously something to consider during design. It could mean anything from ‘this person doesn’t really want to play eve as we want to make it’ to ‘there is more than one issue to fix for this person’. But to ignore it completely as a consideration is plain stupid.
Demonstrably un-true.
I shot at them myself. Whilst not being a baby seal.
Far greater threat to new players, and the game as a whole, is not exposing them to anything and trying to wrap them in cotton wool. Hiring-by-fire is a real thing. But the opportunity to start the fires have been significantly reduced.
Reducing the complexity of the aggro system was definitely a worthy goal and it was in fact the whole intent of crimewatch. NOT the prevention of seal-clubbing. I supported crimewatch myself, but i didn’t dream it would have such an effect on can flipping or ninja-looting. I didn’t expect the most notorious high-sec ninja alliance and genuine content creators TEARS to all but close in a year. A trend followed by wardec nerfs.
could be interesting.