Okay great! Then hopefully you understand that I try not to post on my main because of how spiteful people are in this game. If you look through my killboards though it’s pretty easy to tell who my main is and see the types of engagements I’m talking about.
And I’m sorry for the insults but you’re really coming at me pretty hard. Accusing me of being self-centered and what not. I’m literally requesting a change at my own expense because it is better for the community as a whole.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I can figure out who you are, why not just post on your main?
It has been my experience that when someone comes pushing a change that appears to be directly opposed to their interests, it usually isn’t. Like I said, this sounds to me like you’re asking for this change because it will create the false sense that the bait can get help, when no help is coming, thus more people will be more likely to take the bait.
I do think it’s hard to recruit people into the ganking and highsec PvP lifestyle and it’s only going to get harder with all the income and mineral changes. I don’t know that this change will have the impact you’re suggesting it will, because my experience has been when these types of changes are made, instead of getting a friend to join, it’s just a multi-boxed alt.
And, since there’s already work arounds that folks have come up with (I mean, can’t the logi just shoot the guy who is a suspect and then be free to rep whomever?) I don’t know if we need to be asking for a dev change when there’s already ways around it.
Can I send a private message on this forum? I’ll message you my mains name if I can.
Again, mission runners do not count on getting help. They are solo players. This is quite literally the opposite of how it works in reality.
Yes, and my friend would also have a multi-boxed alt and we could support each other with those alts and furthermore train newbros to support us in the same way. Currently that role does not exist for suspects.
You’re getting things a little turned around. The person I am baiting can bring as many friends as they want. But when they shoot me they do not go suspect, they merely have a limited engagement timer. Meaning I (the suspect) CAN NOT bring friends to support me in any way.
There is no work-around. Our current “work-around” is to fly a frigate that is so OP that it can kill the battleship solo but this “work-around” will likely be nerfed leaving us with nothing.
Right, my first post on this topic. I’ll try to present an informed POV, since I’ve been baiting on and off for the last 10 years and have seen high-sec aggression mechanics change quite a lot, starting with 2M/week war decs and corp-based can flip flagging, to crimewatch 2.0 and now, the neutral assistance changes.
It seems to me the point @hellokittyonline is trying to make is that allowing any kind of remote assistance would benefit both sides, not just the aggressor. If a mission runner runs solo to avoid NPC corp tax and plays an MMO by himself, that is obviously his choice - and I dare say that 95% of those will just ignore any suspects in their mission either way. However, let me enumerate a few of the other situations that come to mind:
It does make sense to remove neutral logi in wars, but the scenario differs quite a lot from baiting because those are already “gang” fights (no, seal clubbing at trade hub gates isn’t a war) and the “baiter vs. mission runner” population probably won’t turn any engagement into a n vs. n+1 fight.
Okay, then we’re back to what I thought in the beginning.
You already win most of these engagements, right? You’re killing battleships with frigates. I mean, this feels like the “call an ambulance, but not for me” meme we’re talking about.
So why are you asking to make it even harder for the guys you’re baiting to win?
Read @Spectra_Tacular 's response. It sums things up pretty good. But to answer your question directly. Because it is more fun to play with friends and build a community and have lower success rate than it is to be 1 of like 10 guys (and falling) left, who rarely ever lose, but also have no way to play together save showing off our killmails in a chat channel.
This change may have improved the War Dec experience but it all but destroyed the suspect community because, while we can still be successful dunking mission runners, we can no longer play together and we can no longer engage in fleet combat.
You can all easily do that if you move to lowsec or nullsec.
@Brisc_Rubal
There is no money to be made in Low/Null sec save PvEing… we’re not PvEers. We’re PvPers and it is more than just a playstyle to us, it is our profession (remember back when “salvaging” was considered a profession? We are what those “salvagers” became). The only people PvPing in low/null are people who are either willing to do A LOT of PvE to fund their PvP (which I and many others like me will not do) or people throwing their credit card at the game (at this point I’d say this is the majority of the hard core ls/ns pvpers).
I’ve actually done quite a bit of low-sec PvP on this toon and I would not have been able to afford it were it not for my high sec PvP paying the bill. Furthermore, Low sec is no longer suitable for small groups as cap ships are now allowed.
I think a lot of PvE minded individuals fail to realize that many PvPers do not enjoy PvE in this game in the slightest and would quit the game long before they would suffer through hours of PvE just to be able to afford the content they really enjoy.
Either way, that is a very weak response. I’m getting the feeling that your bias is too strong to be penetrated. High-sec PvPers need to be considered with changes. Currently we are not, nor are we represented in the CSM. Furthermore CCP seems to have not the slightest clue as to how high-sec incentives and mechanics interact in reality.
What I posted in the other thread, with a couple of minor changes:
I support this. The game very clearly knows the difference between a limited engagement and war aggression, thus it should be simple enough for CCP to retain the much-needed removal of neutral logi from wardecs but allow it in limited engagements.
Let’s talk mechanics. First, to be completely clear, this is NOT about neutral logi for suspect. This is about neutral logi for limited engagements. There are two ways to generate an LE: accepting a duel or shooting a suspect.
Why should neutral logi be allowed to interfere with a duel? Because this is Eve, and Eve has never been about “fair” play. If you can get someone in a duel and then get reps that become valid targets to all of highsec, you won the fight by fighting dirty and taking a risk. It happens.
Why should neutral logi be allowed to rep suspects? Because it’s an escalation in combat, and because it’s symmetrical. Both sides are capable of the same escalation, and engaging any parties that get involved. You engage a suspect. You get them pointed then two of your friends land. His friends/alts land and deliver reps. If you’re smart, you won’t engage unless you’ve got something in reserve for that possibility. One of my favorite things to do back when neutral logi was a thing was to drop a full neut bhaalgorn on grid and remove their reps.
Note one very important detail here: non of this combat begins without both parties accepting the risk of the fight. This isn’t a wardec where you’re forced to defend or lose assets. This isn’t a gank where the math was done long before the first catalyst was on dscan. You were invited to fight, and engaged.
Getting flagged as a suspect means that you have done something that is not allowed but is not yet serious enough to get CONCORD unleased upon you. Ergo: you have commited a crime.
Another person now starts to help you, in order to avoid you receiving punishment. That is also a crime and rightfully earns CONCORD to be unleased.
If you want to bait: you accept that you are commiting a crime and that you will be open for attack for a certain amount of time without being able to receive external support.
So the current mechanics preventing neutral logi to suspects and people at war is fitting, correct and just.
@DutchGunner
This conversation is not about criminals recieving a “just punishment”. Nor is the criminal system meant to “punish” players at all. Rather, to set guidelines by which content can be created.
This conversation is about how those guidelines are too restrictive and make for worse gameplay overall…
The people that kill you are not actually murderers… They’re regular players just like you… This is a video game… Not real life… Remember?
@Brisc_Rubal Thanks for visiting this thread and engaging. It’s great to see CSM representation here.
I’d also like to show my support for this initiative. I myself first became seriously involved with this playstyle as a logistics pilot, and I can attest with certainty that had that not happened, I would not be playing EVE.
My two cents:
Now to address the topic brought up specifically by @Brisc_Rubal:
You can all easily do that if you move to lowsec or nullsec.
I think this is a wrong direction to move this conversation. HS baiting is a profession viable only in HS. All we are doing here is not going gently into that dark night, and asking that the CSM consider the impact that the logi change has had on player interaction outside of wardecs. Suggesting that we move out of HS is tantamount to asking us to abandon the core of our playstyle.
Of course, I cannot speak for everyone, but the HTFU attitude is what attracted me to EVE in the first place. The possibilities for piracy and asshattery is what makes this game unique, and that, in my opinion, is a selling point.
High sec is worth fighting for.
You aren’t represented because there are about 10 of you.
Used to be, if you logied a red flashy (criminal) you’d also get concorded. The system you are describing as “just” (help criminal - be flagged as criminal) used to be in place. Justice in space-pixel online game is defined by us as a community of players. If by that poster you mean that you are not open to clanging your mind, I respect your decision to bow out.
This is the problem. The number of players who would benefit from the change you’re proposing is massively dwarfed by the number of players who would be negatively impacted from the change you’re proposing. The reason it was changed in the first place was specifically because the way it worked before (and whether it’s suspect baiting or war deccing, it was all highsec PvP and the rules are interconnected) was causing retention issues.
I appreciate that you guys are trying to preserve this playstyle, but it sounds to me like you’re still able to do what you’ve been doing. There’s nothing stopping you from getting on comms with these guys and hanging out, even if you can rep the guy doing the baiting.
I just don’t see that the amount of effort it would take to make this change would be worth it in terms of the direct impact on retention.
@Brisc_Rubal To push back on this a little: it used to be that we would recruit people we baited who seemed cool. That meant that unless a ‘mark’ started throwing around obscenities (perhaps understandably so under the circumstances) or RL threats, there was a good chance they’d be offered the path of the pirate, where one shoots players rather than triangles. Some agreed. Some got salty, some spoke of justice in a video game.
Now, every incentive is for us to take every mark for every last isk we can get out of them. It seems that, at least to a certain extent, the mechanical changes are turning us into the boogiepeople they are supposed to stop us from being, wouldn’t you agree?
Really? You don’t see the connection with retention? Eve’s player-base has been getting smaller and smaller since CCP started nerfing high sec PvP. It is the ACTUAL retention problem. PvP players used to be able to join the game, PvP in high sec for money and then with that money move on to any and all other forms of PvP.
Now there is no such path for the PvPer. So the only players we retain are the few who, for some reason unknown to me, find the PvE in this game somehow suitable (have you played Path of Exile? I mean really). Now THESE players are the ones in Null… and you wonder why CCP is so desperately trying to break up the big blue donut… and nerf ship HP… and nerf industrialists… and nerf drone aggression… and are now having to inject risk into high sec with NPCs to replace the PvPers that we’ve lost.
The downfall of this game HAS BEEN the rejection of High Sec PvP as a viable playstyle. CCP refuses to acknowledge the connection between the health of High Sec PvP and the health of PvP overall.
I would think it would be exactly the opposite - there are fewer of you, and far more marks than there were before, so why not recruit more of them?
@Brisc_Rubal Surely you see how a fleet of suspect baiters operating together within a few jumps of each other makes sense if they can come help out when one gets shot, but makes absolutely no sense if all we can do is listen in and look? We are currently incentivized to spread out as much as possible, even operating in different regions, so as not to interfere with each others’ operations.
Put simply, because the one role suitable for a newbro or a new recruit was eliminated by the criminalization of HS logi, I have no incentive to recruit, and the newbro/recruit has no means to begin. If the start-up cost is a 500 mil assault frig that one may lose at any point, one tends to think twice before joining.
