High-sec ganking — can we make it harder without removing PvP?

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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High-sec ganking — can we make it harder without removing PvP?

All aspects of EVE seem to have been “improved” over the years. Quality of life has gotten better, interfaces are better, and many things are easier and more convenient than they used to be.

But I keep asking myself:

Improved for who?

And especially: have these improvements mostly benefited the players who can multibox large numbers of characters?

A little background

I recently lost yet another long-time EVE friend.

I met him and many others many years ago when we were all part of a null-sec corporation. We did most of what null-sec had to offer. We stayed up late on standby for the alliance, went on fleets, fought wars and generally lived the null-sec life.

Eventually, real life changed.

Many of us moved away from serious null-sec and PvP. Jobs, family and other responsibilities meant we couldn’t dedicate the same amount of time to the game anymore.

But we didn’t stop enjoying EVE.

We started doing more casual PvE, missions, exploration, industry and whatever else we could fit into the few hours we had available.

My friend recently unsubscribed.

He basically said he’d had enough.

The game mechanics no longer felt fair to someone who wanted to play casually. In his eyes, the game protects the players who want to ruin someone else’s experience, while giving casual players very few meaningful ways to protect themselves.

And then he said goodbye.

I understand him.

And that’s what bothers me.

He wasn’t some new player who didn’t understand what EVE was.

He was an old EVE player.

Now his name will eventually just sit on my contact list with:

Last logged in: more than a month ago.

And eventually I’ll probably remove him.

I’m not asking Fenris Creations to remove high-sec PvP

I want to make that very clear.

High-sec should not be completely safe.

EVE is EVE because there is risk. Suicide ganking, piracy, wars and PvP are important parts of the game.

I don’t want high-sec turned into a theme park where nobody can attack anyone.

What I would like to see is a change to how convenient and effortless certain types of high-sec ganking have become.

Especially sitting on NPC stations and gates with multiple characters, waiting for targets to appear.

I don’t think the answer is simply to make ganking impossible.

Instead, I think high-sec security could actually interfere with criminal activity without preventing it.

My suggestion: NPC security should interfere with criminals

Imagine that a player disables their safety and goes criminal while sitting on an NPC station or gate.

Instead of NPC security simply waiting until the criminal act has happened and then sending CONCORD to destroy them, the station or gate could apply a non-lethal electronic warfare effect to the criminal.

For example:

  • Sensor dampening
  • Increased locking time
  • Reduced scan resolution
  • Reduced targeting range
  • Reduced sensor strength

Nothing that prevents the gank.

Nothing that destroys the ship.

Just something that makes operating directly on top of a heavily protected NPC installation more difficult.

The gankers would still have options.

They could:

Warp away and come back.

Bring support ships to counter the effects.

Use different tactics and positioning.

Accept the additional difficulty of operating in a heavily protected area.

That creates gameplay rather than removing gameplay.

Make high-sec security actually matter

This is the part I don’t understand about the current system.

If NPC stations and gates are supposed to be heavily protected areas, why does their security essentially boil down to:

“You can commit the crime, kill the target, and then CONCORD will kill you afterwards.”

Why can’t the security forces interfere before and during the attack?

I’m not asking for NPCs to save every miner, hauler or mission runner.

I’m asking for a middle ground between:

“High-sec is completely safe.”

and

“NPC security is basically irrelevant until after the victim is already dead.”

A criminal sitting on an NPC gate with ten Catalysts shouldn’t necessarily be able to operate exactly like they were sitting in an unprotected system.

But they should still be able to do it.

It should just require more preparation.

The goal isn’t to stop gankers

A well-organized gank fleet should still be able to kill someone.

A determined PvPer should still be able to hunt people.

Players should still be able to lose ships in high-sec.

I don’t want to remove that.

I want to make the gameplay more interactive.

Right now, a casual player can sometimes feel like the only meaningful counterplay is simply:

“Don’t be there.”

And that’s not particularly interesting gameplay.

Instead, I’d like to see mechanics where the attacker has to think:

“How do we overcome the security interference?”

And the defender can think:

“How can I use this environment to my advantage?”

Now both sides have something to work with.

What about multiboxing?

This is where I think the discussion becomes especially interesting.

Multiboxing itself isn’t the problem.

EVE has always allowed players to run multiple accounts, and there are legitimate reasons for doing so.

The question is whether mechanics designed around individual players still work when one person can effectively field a large number of characters simultaneously.

If one player can park a large number of gank ships at a gate or station and instantly apply overwhelming damage to a casual player, perhaps the game needs some environmental mechanics that make that tactic less convenient.

Not impossible.

Just less effortless.

Keep EVE dangerous — but make the danger interesting

I don’t want EVE to become safe.

I want it to remain dangerous and unpredictable.

But there’s a difference between:

“You lost your ship because you made a bad decision.”

and:

“You lost your ship because someone brought a large multiboxed fleet to the gate and there wasn’t meaningful counterplay available to you.”

The first creates tension.

The second can create resignation.

And resignation is dangerous for a subscription game.

Because eventually the player doesn’t think:

“I need to get better.”

They think:

“I don’t have time for this anymore.”

And they unsubscribe.

That’s what happened to my friend.

And I understand him.

I’m not claiming this is the perfect solution.

I’m interested in hearing what other players think.

How could Fenris Creations make high-sec ganking less convenient without removing it?

Would localized NPC electronic warfare around NPC stations and gates create interesting counterplay?

Or would there be better ways to achieve the same goal?

Don’t make high-sec safe. Make high-sec security actually matter.

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AI spam posts — can these be banned on the forums?

I would like a forum where people do not generate endless texts with minimal effort, a forum where writers do not push the burden of communication completely onto the readers.

As a reader I’m not going to read all that.

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Not necessarily PI, but a very poor presentation that makes you really tired and angry. Almost each sentence on a single new line.

Well

at least

not

every second

word

on a

new

line.

It has a few interesting thoughts, but already mentions that the counterplay and scaling up will again defeat it. So makes no sense to me in the end. That one lone pilot would have been affected in the same way as before.

For me the question is: why was he alone and not in a corporation that casually helped with the issue? And if that wasn’t his thing then why wasn’t he able to adapt if it is true that he had so much null-sec experience. Unless he was a passive player that got dragged around and was always told what to do and didn’t figure out the “why” by himself.

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These are the chars that Exordium breeds into EVE.

AI Slop desired by CCP.

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tl;dr:
The core problem isn’t highsec ganking and not multiboxing itself, but the scaling advantage of using multiple accounts for the exact same activity: one person can effortlessly coordinate an entire fleet, while opposing players need multiple humans, each with their own limited time, attention, and chance of making mistakes (or are forced to multibox themselves or just deal with being overwhelmed by a single player). This creates an imbalance in activities like ganking, mining, Skyhooks, ESS, and PvE, where with multiboxing one player effectively replaces an entire group, which feels like a form of pay-to-win.

Doubt it?:

Long Version:

Basically boils down to the root many problems have in the game:

Multiboxing, not to do several various things at the same time, like different chars doing different things in different systems, but all chars doing the same thing to boost this specific activity’s result.

In a 10 player fleet someone can mess up. Someone or more than one could suddenly be called by their wife, husband, children, parents or whatever. They could be distracted by real life at any time. Or just aren’t concentrated and make mistakes.

Can you counter that gank? No. But at least you die to 10 real humans who put up the effort to set up their gank. They each spend their time to set up everything. Time they could have used on other things.

That feels a lot different than dying to the same guy playing 10 accounts and killing you effortlessly. No 9 other people who could be distracted by real life or messing up their roles. Just 1 guy. Can he still be distracted or mess up? Sure. But the probability is lower than with 10 different people.

Problem isn’t multiboxing per se. Problem is the scaling efficiency of multiboxing applied to the very same activity.

Multiboxing to Jita trade with 1 character, do NPC missions with another somewhere else and mine with a third somewhere else again? No problem. Heck, even in the same system that would still be fine.

Multiboxing to boost efficiency on the same activity, no matter the activity? Not fine. Because effort on both sides doesn’t scale well.

Skyhooking and ESS: 1 single player can bring a fleet easily and try to rob your hook or ESS and basically harass you. He can warp to safe, log, buy groceries and come back in 2 hours. 1 dedicated multiboxer on his vacation with not much real-life distraction can basically harass you for days around the clock with a little bit of 6-7 hours sleep needed. You can only counter this by having enough corp/alliance mates on the board online at that time or multibox yourself.

Let that sink in. 1 person with enough money and time harassing a corp or small alliance of several players just because he only has 1 person’s time schedule to manage. That doesn’t scale at all.

Mining? The same. 1 guy mining in his Orca and 20 Hulks only has 1 schedule and needs no coordination. Corp/alliance? Well… you need to hope one of the Orca players is online. Or have EVERYONE train into Orca so everyone could technically boost. Doesn’t scale well.

You can take every n+1 activity in EVE and apply that. And most activities are N+1, even PVE. Faster killing = less time on grid. Or enough power so people don’t even think about bothering you.

The problem isn’t highsec ganking. The problem is multibox scaling of multiboxing the very same activity.

And I really mean the very same activity, not “the same kind”.

Do 5 different L4 missions with 5 chars? Have fun. I mean… still an advantage to farm standing faster than other people. But standing farming doesn’t feel THAT unfair. And there’s the probability of having to defend 5 chars against 5 ganks simultaneously on 5 different grids.

Do 1 L4 mission with 5 chars to spam those missions? Not okay. You have all your chars together and can bring good firepower to defend against smaller ganks. And you only have 1 D-scan to watch instead of 5.

Doesn’t the multiboxer doing 3 different activities at the same time still have an advantage since he can earn money from different sources at the same time? Sure, but heck, he pays for 3 accounts and the impact is smaller, since he competes with other players on nearly the same base (1 char doing the activity) and he has to split his attention.

Back to topic. Everything else recommended is to some points difficult to apply.

  1. It is made known that Concord is there to punish, not to save you, very early in the game iirc.
  2. You go criminal once you do a criminal action, no? Or do you mean Concord should apply:
    Sensor dampening
    Increased locking time
    Reduced scan resolution
    Reduced targeting range
    Reduced sensor strength

Once someone disables safety? Not sure if that would be a good idea.

The gankers would still have options.
They could:
Warp away and come back.
Bring support ships to counter the effects.
Use different tactics and positioning.
Accept the additional difficulty of operating in a heavily protected area.

On a gate or station? No. They will get blapped very soon in highsec. Unless you change concord so they don’t kill you quickly but slowly where you can drag out the kill for as long as possible. Which would only be a waste of time and abused since concord and gates probably wouldn’t attack other gankers during that time, so you have one dedicated fleet to stall concord response on other ganks as long as possible with a tanky ship and some cheap reppers. Grats, you invented the equivalent to pulling concord for gate reactions (whether its guns or NPCs).

Just disabling safety isn’t a 100% indicator someone is about to do something criminal. They could always come to the conclusion “nah… maybe no ganking tonight. Not feeling it” and just dock. The first indicator would be disabling safety AND locking someone not in war / without killright.

And at that point… it would be too late anyway. Even if CONCORD reps your shields or armor, it doesn’t matter if the ganker just brings enough alpha damage on the field.

You can’t predict whether someone will perform criminal actions. And I don’t think it should be needed.

If you would even enforce that you can’t fly the same hull more than once simultaneously it would disrupt some of todays most easiest ganking setups. Catalysts. It would also ruin things like running 2 retris and a deacon in T4+ abyssals.

In my opinion the problem isn’t being ganked. It is being ganked by 1 person effortlessly setting up an entire fleet in 5 minutes instead of real multiple humans doing that.

Because that feels like pay2win and basically it is.

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Simply tldr !

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How about a 3 line suggestion for recommended course of action?

image
image400×225 23.7 KB

You can never go wrong listening to the advice of the best AI assistant there every will be. Btw he’s right, some pew pew and 'splosions are always a good answer to any situation. :wink:

:thinking: :smiling_face_with_horns: :ccpguard:

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TBH if you’ve played Eve for a “long” time and you’re still struggling with suicide ganking, try a game that doesn’t involve critical thinking instead.

Not remotely ironic that the type of mind that can’t think of a way to overcome this mildest of adversities also can’t even complain about it on its own power.

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i have 1 reply for you…

everything you complain about can be understood if you go experice being a ganker yourself.

So go gank, or STFU

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I have thought long and deep about your suggestion…

Let me summarize it:

Summary

No!

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AI? Didn’t read.

AIDR

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Another AI poop pile.

:poop:

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No need to. I added the tl;dr at the top of my post before the long version. Have fun

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I think the best reply to this ai slop post is to post 40 000 word essays

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…generated by AI ofc… in the end everyone will have their agents battle their arguments out on the forums…

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I actually agree with most of what you’re saying here. My original post was mainly about the same thing: not removing ganking or PvP, but making high-sec ganking less convenient than it already is, and not necessarily only because of multiboxing.

The point about 10 real players vs. one person controlling 10 characters is especially interesting. It’s not that the 10-man fleet is necessarily easier to beat, but there is a completely different level of effort, coordination and time involved.

Personally, I think it’s healthier for the game when 10 real players put in the effort to organize and run a gank, while having to work around the game’s mechanics and actually coordinate with each other. That’s very different from 10 characters being controlled by one person, or even 10 real players simply sitting idle on a station or gate waiting for an opportunity to appear with very little effort in high-sec space.

And you’re right about my suggestion with the safety setting. I don’t think simply disabling safety should trigger anything either. That was more of a rough idea than a fully thought-out mechanic. There would obviously need to be a much better way of identifying when someone is actually engaging in criminal activity.
One thing behind my original idea, though, was the actual presence of security around NPC stations and gates. If we make a real-world comparison, you wouldn’t normally have 10 armed people standing outside a shopping mall with guns, checking people’s bags and waiting to rob people without some kind of law enforcement response. Obviously, EVE is a sci-fi game and shouldn’t work exactly like real life, but it does make me wonder why NPC security around these supposedly protected locations doesn’t have more of an effect before the criminal act happens.

What I really want is some kind of mechanic that makes it less convenient for one person to park a fleet of identical ships on a gate or station and operate it almost as efficiently as ten separate players.

I don’t think multiboxing itself is the problem. Running different characters doing different things is completely fine. It’s the scaling advantage when all those accounts are doing exactly the same activity that feels problematic to me.

And honestly, I think that’s a much bigger discussion than just high-sec ganking. As you pointed out, you can see the same issue with mining, ESS, Skyhooks, PvE and probably a lot of other areas of the game.

There is also a historical aspect to this that I think is worth considering.

Years ago, high-sec ganking was much more concentrated around certain areas: the large market hubs like Jita and the heavily trafficked routes. The general advice was pretty straightforward: avoid those areas when possible, and if you absolutely had to travel through them, fit your ship properly and take the appropriate precautions. That still left the casual solo player with an option. If you only had an hour or two to play after work, you could move away from the busiest areas and find a quieter part of high-sec where you could run some missions, mine, explore or just enjoy the game without constantly being a target.

Nowadays, it feels like ganking has spread much further into those quieter areas as well. And I think part of the reason is exactly what we’re discussing: when the mechanics make it so easy and convenient to operate a gank fleet, there is very little reason for gankers to limit themselves to the traditional high-traffic areas.
So the problem isn’t simply that ganking exists. It’s that the cost and effort of doing it has become low enough that the activity can spread almost everywhere, making it increasingly difficult for casual players to find those quieter corners of high-sec where they can simply log in and enjoy the limited time they have. I don’t want to remove that danger from EVE. I just think there should be more of a reason for the gankers to actually put some effort into finding and setting up their targets, rather than being able to sit indefinitely on a station or gate and wait for something to come along.

And there is also a business side to this.
From a game company’s perspective, the casual solo player who pays for a subscription is just as much a customer as the highly active ganker. Both are paying for access to the same game. A subscription-based game isn’t necessarily healthier because one player logs in for 12 hours a day while another only plays for two hours a week. What matters is having enough players who remain subscribed and continue to enjoy the game. If casual players repeatedly reach the point where they feel that the game isn’t worth their limited free time anymore, they will eventually cancel their subscriptions. And that’s exactly what I’m seeing with some of the older players I used to play with. They aren’t quitting because they suddenly hate EVE. They’re quitting because they don’t feel that the experience they can get from the game anymore is worth the frustration.

I don’t think the answer is to protect casual players from everything. Risk, loss and PvP are fundamental parts of EVE. But there needs to be a healthy balance between the different types of players. The game needs the gankers, PvPers, industrialists, miners, traders, explorers and casual PvE players. If one playstyle becomes so efficient and convenient that it starts driving other paying players away, then I think it’s worth asking whether the underlying mechanics are still creating the healthy ecosystem that EVE needs.

At the end of the day, we’re all customers. The goal shouldn’t be to make the game better for one group at the expense of another. It should be to create mechanics where both sides have meaningful gameplay.

I don’t want casual players to be immune from ganking. I want them to have a reason to keep playing after they get ganked.

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Get better and don’t get ganked any more. Takes 1 day to learn. Reason enough?

All that “HS mimimimimi”… all you guys need to do is *survive 20 seconds" and then an unbeatable army of NPCs appear and blasts away all offenders. And even this is too much? Jesus… Tank your goddamn ships, don’t offer good loot, keep your eyes open, be on the move at all times and warp out once anyone appears near to you that shouldn’t be there.

All those lies about “yeah but the casual player…”. A casual player can do stuff in HS in a brick-tanked Drake. Will never get ganked. Never, even if he plays a 100 years directly next to Jita.

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You can’t out-tank a one-player fleet with a theoretical unlimited count of ships. 5 Catalysts not enough? No problem. I just bring 10 then. Still not enough? 20 then. Or move from Cata to something else.

And unfortunately the ganks we have aren’t for loot exclusively. We have many ganks whoms goal it is to gather fat zkillboard greens at the cost of low reds.

But in the end the result is the same.

Ganking isn’t bad. The scaling of 1 people projecting a 20 cheap ships fleet is just unfair. And we don’t talk about 1 person flying 2 Brawl, 4 Kites, 1 Tackle, 2 Logi, 1 E-War. We talk about 1 Person flying 20 same-fitted brawls or kites pressing just a few buttons more in a dense timeframe. But you would still need to know how to avoid ganks if those 20 ships are real players whether they are out for loot or for zkillboard values.

The occurence would be lower though, if multiboxers can’t fly the exact same hull more than once simultaneously and have an increasing penalty (in module effects for example) for each char they bring on the same grid.

Same hull prohibition would still allow 1 catalyst, 1 thrasher, 1 corax, 1 coercer. Bringing them on the same grid though would apply a penalty on their stats like rate of fire, alpha dmg etc.

You technically could still gank, farm L4 missions, Abyss etc. Just less effective than before since you may bring 5 ships but their projection is scaled down to 2.8 (arbitrary number). The only real solution to remove the multibox-projection would be removing multiboxing. Otherwise you can just modify efficiency scaling for same-grid activity.

if you have 1 scout and 1 freighter pilot you could still do that Since they aren’t on the same grid. Scout jumps first, checks situation, then your freighter jump and scout leaves grid.

However, flying a freighter and your 1-2 webbing alts would be penalized as well as the 1-person-20-cata fleet. Not in the same ratio, but by the same underlying logic.

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I think the actual solution to the problem you’re describing is to stop trying to solve it piecemeal through CONCORD mechanics and instead address the underlying question: who is responsible for governing highsec?

The answer should be Imperial Delegated Local Governance.

The basic idea is that sovereignty-holding nullsec alliances would be granted stewardship over designated highsec territories. They would function as local authorities under the Empire, with limited delegated powers to administer their holdings. Think county government, marcher lordship, or feudal bailiwick, except the county sheriff is backed by several thousand degenerates in Muninns.

The Steward could establish local ordinances, regulate certain activities, issue permits, levy taxes, appoint sheriffs and other officials, and otherwise administer the territory. Violations of those ordinances could generate Suspect flags, with an optional Three-Strikes system escalating repeat offenders to Criminal status. In return, the Steward would have actual obligations: maintaining order, defending residents against external wars, and providing military forces when the realm requires them.

And this is where your problem with highsec ganking gets solved.

Instead of expecting CONCORD to somehow make highsec perfectly safe while simultaneously preserving meaningful PvP, you give the people who actually understand organized warfare responsibility for protecting the population. If your local Steward decides that unrestricted ganking is contrary to the peace of the holding, they can regulate it. If they decide it is perfectly acceptable, they can allow it. The important point is that security becomes a matter of local governance rather than a universal CONCORD switch.

Naturally, the residents themselves would have some obligations as well. Taxes, permits, and—where appropriate—military levies. They are, after all, vassals, not independent sovereign princes.

And frankly, this is probably necessary. The average highsec resident has demonstrated repeatedly that he is simply not capable of handling questions of territorial security without wandering onto the forums to demand that CCP make the dangerous spaceship activity stop. This is the mental and spiritual condition of the peasant.

A properly constituted aristocracy would therefore provide significant social benefits. The vassal gets protection, predictable local rules, and someone else to worry about defense. The Steward gets revenue, manpower, and the satisfying knowledge that several thousand people are now legally obligated to call him “my lord” in everything but name.

It is, in other words, a much more coherent solution than continuing to make CONCORD progressively more elaborate because some highsec peasant got exploded.

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