I have killed quite a few ships in lowsec that were doing one of the following PvE related activities:
Mining
Belt ratting
Huffing
Exploring
And in every single case where I received communication (excepting one) I received remarks about:
how bad of a person I am in real life
how socipathic I am
how I am ruining their game
how they’re going to quit because of me
their sexual relations with my mother
straight up obscenities
Those to me scream “can’t handle loss”. Y’know what I’ve never seen? “Damn it, you caught me. You won’t get me next time.” That reflects a different mental fortitude, to me. Those kinds of “PvE-oriented-mindsetters” I would love to have around instead. Unfortunately, I don’t think they exist – probably because they’re the kinds of folks that do both PvE and PvP related activities, which generally leans towards the “PvP mindset”. But maybe I misunderstand your terms, here.
The one exception is the Bludd guy out living in Futzchag, the guy is off his rocker and believes he owns the system and has declared it NRDS and me an enemy of him and his non-existent friends (But One Day He’ll Have A Lot Of Friends And Get Revenge™) after I simply yellow-boxed him in a nebula cloud during a moment of tomfoolery. Which is awesome sandbox engagement.
That’s in low. I have little hope that attitudes would improve in high sec, judging by what Aiko documents on her blog (and yes I realize it is cherrypicking). So while I take your point that I sound like a bias jaded old emotional fool that ruins his own points with an undercurrent of negativity, I do hope you understand that it is really hard for me to brush past my own experiences. I’d rather continue to be honest with my temperment than put up a faux show – I hope you prefer that too, even if continually disappointing to you.
Why? In every MMO I know people are significantly more outraged when another player kills them than they are when the die to a mob. I don’t know why that’s the case and I don’t think it really matters but it seems to be true.
You’ve already said that creates “imagination and roleplay”. My question to you was why you believe that shooting other players creates imagination and roleplay but any playstyle that doesn’t involve directly shooting other players doesn’t.
It really depends on if you consider that to be a risk of loss or something that’s lost as a certainty. I consider it the latter and so it’s a cost rather than a risk. Compare that to someone hunting in other areas of space with a ship they would prefer not to lose where their ideal outcome is their ship still standing and the enemy ship destroyed, the potential for loss of their ship is a tangible risk. So the only real risk is failure to accomplish the goal, which can be said of any playstyle.
Killrights aren’t really important to most gankers. It’s not like a ganker finishes ganking then flies around in a normal ship that they actually care about losing.
I don’t know specifically what your playstyle entails but the impression I get from your views is that you consider combat PvP playstyles to be superior and anyone who chooses to avoid that type of combat to be bad. I think most people will do what you say you do here though which is jump about between activities. Seeing someone mining in highsec for example does not mean they only mine in highsec and do nothing else, it just means they are currently mining in highsec.
Isn’t that a biased sample though? Of course people who contact you afterwards are going to do so because they are salty. I’ve hunted plenty of the same types in lowsec and while the contact I get resembles yours, getting contacted at all is rare.
Aiko is a different case because gankers often initiate contact. I was autopiloting an empty pod on a new alt and got blown up, received two mails (both bait) and a chat invite. I just ignored them but clearly that’s going to generate bad responses from the most unstable people.
I second this. The number of times the above has been thrown out to me by the highsec crybear is too many to count.
And I’m seeing it more and more in low sec as they venture out into that space. And they almost always lead with “I was minding my own business!” Many will expound to “I’m not in faction warfare you [insert obscenity here].
The game is changing, and not for the better. CCP is catering to a very toxic entitled low effort group of people.
Now there’s an interesting point, an old one but still one that hasn’t had any conclusion to its debate. We all know (or should) that almost all nullsec/lowsec/wh players have at least one hisec character - the obligatory Jita character for instance - to have access, anonimity, shipping, or what have you. If one were to ask them how they consider themselves they would most likely say they are primarily nullsec players, and not only for the glamour of it. They use hisec merely for their real purposes in anything but hisec.
That bloats the numbers of hisec characters. Even more so, many have extra accounts to have a presence in hisec, and let them stay logged in for most of the time, especially if these are trader characters e.g. in Jita, perhaps even scouts. That’s why the ccp data is often skewed towards those hisec logins in a funny way. Moreover, many of those so-called hisec dwellers run logistics (transport, not the boosting kind) between hisec and wherever the real main lives. That involves high value transports thus losses. Anyone complaining about too many losses ? One has to look for the real reasons. Cui bono if it gets nerfed. The tentacles stretch wide and deep (true EvE style).
Now, every time ccp nerfs hisec ganking it benefits players of the type described above for obvious ingame reasons (their isk, their logistics, their alliance/coalition/conglomerate income). At the same time it prevents new players from coming to grips with the single most defining aspect i.e., pvp.
Sure, there’s a lot of hisec activity. But one needs to break down this activity according to age of the account involved. What picture would emerge ? I wish it would…
I mean They can change I used to do that. that but now I say gf and then die or they die I have learned that happens only times I have gotten very angry when they don’t say gf after they kill me then I put 50 mill bounties on them.
edit:
for more context I lost a very expensive battle cruiser to them, I said good fight which it was close and they just ghost me and kill me no gf no response nothing. thats why they have a 50 mill bounty on them right now
Yet more of your grandiose sweeping generalities where you just pluck some convenient narrative out of thin air.
You don’t ? Then why are you making definitive sweeping statements as if you do ?
Here we go again with your amazing psychic knowledge of what ‘most people’ want or do.
Other than getting in on some Caldari sentry gun kills in 2018 and 2019…you barely have a killboard record in 6 years.
WHY is is that practically all the anti PvP people on this forum have zero kills record in 3, 4, even 6 or more years ? Its like people who clearly barely even play the game are lecturing everyone else on it.
That’s not what I said. The imagination I mentioned doesn’t involve “let’s pretend to wear an eye patch and yell “yarr””. The imagination I meant was one involving the use of game mechanics, observing a potential target and getting a feel of its habits, planning, preparing and executing sometimes fairly complicated activities involving … blowing up other ships. That requires a lot more brain power and imagination than shooting a rock. It’s what eve players have done for two decades. It’s what they should continue to do for the next two decades.
Which is exactly true. That’s the real risk the gankers take, as they see their all but certain ship loss as an investment, a cost, their ship is expendable ammo. In all probability it costs them ISK. Then again ISK is not the only possible reward in a game like EvE. A sense of accomplishment, even if limited to a group of like-minded individuals, is as big, if not bigger, a reward than the value of the loot.
Unless they mess with an imaginative person, who can craft a response, lay a trap, organize a fleet, wait for the right opportunity to strike, figures out how to retaliate. No one said EvE was easy. In fact we like it difficult. Outsmarting other players is a thing here.
buzzer Nope… I merely consider pvp an essential skill set to have in this game, either for actively hunting and fighting, or for actively evading other people hunting and fighting you. The best, if not the only way to do the evading is by learning to think like the hunter, and by making use of all the tools that ccp and the player base have constructed over two decades. A c t i v e l y. Those who don’t even want to save their own hides in New Eden, even with other people trying to educate and assist them, yes, I would call them a bad fit for this game, and would suggest they try a less demanding game - preferably without visiting the forums.
Eh, no. I get that. You’re definitely one of the better posters and more thoughtful. I guess I probably let my own emotional bias get the better of me after reading a few posts I consider overboard on the chest-thumping “HS ganking is so hardcore, me so strong!” side of things.
As you say, it’s much better to have your bias and be aware of it and state it, than it is to pretend your bias is something else or ignore it altogether. And what the hell, sandbox is sandbox, have any bias you like… just own it!
My own bias (player-wise) is against the chest-thumpers who do high-sec PvP and pretend it’s some brave glorious struggle and they’re super-skilled mercenary warriors for doing it. To me, I see high-sec PvP as essentially the same cautious, mostly risk-free, reward farming as high-sec PvE. Some do it for profit, some do it for entertainment, but they’re all doing it for the same reason - it’s the region that’s convenient and easy, it’s got the available targets close at hand, and is fairly risk-free if you take some precautions.
I see little difference in the two sides, despite the mountains of rhetoric exchanged.
What I do wish people could focus on more is brainstorming ways that would make the environment richer and more interesting for both sides (PvE, PvP and maybe even others). And less on “my side is good, the other side is bad”.
For the record, my real bias is both for and against CCP. For, for the 20% of what they do that is good and useful. And against, for the way 80% of their activity seems ill-considered, poorly designed, and against even their own self-interest. It’s like watching a train-wreck in slow motion while knowing half the clients of your local business are on board…
TBH I feel that in many ways, this stems from people being used to more mainstream MMOs (where such things don’t happen, for the most part), and EVE ads/CCP/the NPE not adequately setting up player expectations for what’s going to occur in the game.
I don’t believe this is true, at least not intentionally on CCP’s part. They just don’t have a good understanding of EVE player behavior and motivations and they keep making poor decisions that seem waffle between “more accounts and more playtime invested for less reward” and desperation moves to draw players back in with more reward for less risk. One effort is to maximize cash return per player, and the other effort is to bring players back after the first effort drives them away.
I’m not anti-PvP. Maybe the problem is with trying to use killboard data as a way to judge whether or not you honestly engage with someone in a discussion.
Yes, I know, that was just an amusing way to present it. The underlying point was that being imaginative doesn’t require you to shoot other players.
It doesn’t really matter how much brainpower it takes, and I’d expect that whether you’re blowing up a ship or shooting a rock in highsec, that’s unlikely to be a goal in itself, it’s more likely a single step.
Which makes it a preference of yours. I consider PvP (and I’m still going with the view of the pew pew kind you spoke about above for simplicity) essential to the game, but I don’t think every single person must like it and must take part. I think it’s a good thing that you can come to this game and have a variety of ways to play it and that makes it a virtual world rather than a combat simulator with a crafting system tacked on.
I completely agree with this. The problem CCP seems to be trying to resolve is “how do we retain people long enough that they want to learn this”. That’s why I think their goal of discouraging new player ganking while encouraging high value ganking is a good goal, only the current attempt they made to do that mostly went the other way. It should never be possible to opt out of PvP completely, but it should be far less appealing to attack new players.
What you’re really up against is the sort of person who loves running rings around the NPCs in Far Cry…as the original ones were pretty dumb…and then pats themselves on the back for the amazing achievement of killing 20 pretty stupid mercs single handedly. What a hero !
Real players are far more sly, cunning, prepared, and so on. In other words they are much harder to beat. And unlike AI such as in Far Cry or even the still not perfect AI in more recent games ( even in Fallout 4 it is pretty useless ), real players are unpredictable…and that’s what the PvP haters cannot stand. They want the same old boringly predictable belt rats, combat anomalies, etc and to get hero mode with the least effort or risk possible.
So of course they are cheesed off when along comes some totally unpredicted, unexpected, risk and shock horror…their entitled little mindset actually loses !
Nope, it’s a demand from the game’s setting, from the way the designers designed it. It’s the design most of us are very fond of. And why we resist changes to that particular part of the design.
I don’t like mining - it’s a running joke with my buddies in EvE too. Yet I do it because I have to if I wish to accomplish certain goals in a certain way. There’s no avoiding it. There’s no difference in my not liking mining and someone else not liking a pvp aspect (of the pewpew kind). We both have to deal with it the best we can. I pointed it out earlier, at first I accepted the reality of pvp in this sandbox because I had to. That’s the game. And from there on, with a few humble successes under the belt, I did grow fond of it over the years.
My real (current) preference is to challenge my characters into doing more complicated things with fewer and fewer tools. A few days ago I ran a humble 3/10 in an even more humble punisher on a very lowly alpha, where on a lazy day I would simply take my Confessor and pewpew the place empty in a matter of minutes without so much as repping. Yesterday I killed belt rat battleships in nullsec with nothing but a merlin, for the SP daily. A guy in his ratter ishtar told me to go look for frigate sized rats instead, until he saw me kill a battleship. In my 4M t2 fitted merlin on a 5M sp character. Another 5M alpha runs the entire SoE arc in a similarly fitted Merlin in a few hours, including soloing Dagan without blinking. Silly, I know, but it feels good. And I play to feel good, just like anyone else. I’m not particularly good, but anything I do achieve is the result of dedication.
Wanting to improve is, next to outsmarting other players, the other aspect that is a huge thing in EvE. On all levels and activities. But as this is a multiplayer single-shard universe, it would be foolish to pretend that one can live in splendid isolation even when that potential hunter shows up on dscan, even in hisec. He has a right to be there. No one has the right to deny him that right.
And that is the real difference between adjusting and adapting vs. effortlessness.
P.S.
I tend to agree with that, but completely disagree with the way ccp seems to go about it. Making new players resourceful and aware, perhaps via the NPE/AIR would serve the purpose a lot better. And that would make that level of pvp more interesting too. But lo and behold, the current ingame economy is not newbie friendly enough at the moment to attempt this.
Hehe, on the subject of N+1: the battle that took place two weeks ago in H-PA29 was proof that N+1 is only half the story. Almost 4000 people in local, one side in subcaps, the other side richly provided with caps and even supercaps. The subcaps won the ISK war, many caps (mostly FAXes) were lost, effectively nuking the idea that (super)cap fleets can’t be handled by subcap fleets. It takes a few savvy FC’s, sure, but it can be and was done.
[quote="Wadiest Yong, post:489, topic:371852, full:true, username:Wadiest_Yong”]
Hehe, on the subject of N+1: the battle that took place two weeks ago in H-PA29 was proof that N+1 is only half the story. Almost 4000 people in local, one side in subcaps, the other side richly provided with caps and even supercaps. The subcaps won the ISK war, many caps (mostly FAXes) were lost, effectively nuking the idea that (super)cap fleets can’t be handled by subcap fleets. It takes a few savvy FC’s, sure, but it can be and was done.
/ending shameless propaganda
[/quote]
i admit that there is good FCs in null
they are the flowers in the desert
I hope this gets across with the genuine positive sense I intend, as I’m bad at compliments: I do greatly appreciate your responses. Even if I don’t respond to them all. Even if they are direct, challenging, or in disagreement. I enjoy and am grateful we get to disagree without being entirely disagreeable people (I know I can come off very strong). You demonstrate empathy – hard to find on the internet.
It’s not a question of chest thumping…but that the real division here is between those who are actively out there doing stuff in Eve, and a whole bunch of players who between them don’t even have as much as a handful of killboard records in the past 5 years.
To me that says everything anyone needs to know and the thread can be closed.
