I’m an inactive player who’s been out of the game for years. Thinking of rejoining but heard bad things about the state of highsec PvP I was last active in 2018 and dabbling in heists and attacking citadels, but my mainstays were faction warfare, ninja looting(and ganking), and low/null exploration.
Trying to get a baseline foe the state of the game from a PvP/Grief perspective. People saying that highsec griefing and stealing is dead? What happened exactly? And what options are still valid for highsec PvP? Is ninjaing still a thing?
Is that still doable or is it not an option anymore? I posted this on reddit(lol) and heard ninjaing and shooting MTUs is still a thing, but wanted to ask the main forums as well.
Ganking is still viable, but they raised EHP across the board multiple times and especially for mining/industrial hulls, so you need more shooters now.
Baiting (e.g. suspect-baiting through theft, shooting deployables, etc.) is marginally viable. Most players in high-sec will have their safety set to green, so the system will literally prevent them from engaging you impulsively. Because the proportion of PvE-only players is the highest it’s ever been in the game’s history, most will simply be too afraid to do anything about your provocations. But it is possible with effort, as some highly proficient players like Krig can attest.
The war scene is effectively dead. At the very least, it’s nothing like it was before. Structure ownership requirements have tanked war eligibility to somewhere around 5-10% of what it was before the change. Because of station HQ requirements to declare wars, all of the smaller war groups have coalesced into one big cartel, composed of 3 or so individual groups. They’re all allied to each other and some larger null-sec entities. If you try to do wars on your own, they’ll take down your war HQ(s) to crush you as competition; you will either join them, or be forced to abandon the activity. Their targets are predominantly null-sec entities, since they’re nearly always war-eligible. They also go after random high-sec carebears who drop structures by extorting them for protection money, and taking down their (almost always undefended) structures when they don’t.
Theft, scamming, and other similar activities are for the most part unchanged.
That wardec change has me scratching my head. And judging by player counts I’m guessing they never got the influx of PvE players they were hoping for. It warms my heart that baiting and theft are still viable at least.
Yes, it was because the “new players were being griefed” or something like that. Then they posted some mathematically-asinine graphs to try to prove their point and it was obvious they were done by someone who never read the first chapter of a statistics 101 textbook.
The real story is that the CSM lobbied them pretty hard to push this through, since even before the changes, the primary recipients of wars were large null-sec groups, and well you know what the CSM is.
It’s only going to get worse. The amount of complaints is increasing despite all the nerfs.
No…that was not my experience. They actually nerfed the EHP on the Procurer in November 2021. I went from being able to get 80K EHP, down to 60K or so…when they changed the Procurer from 4 mid slots down to just 2. And they increased the align time. As far as I can see the Proc still only has 2 mid slots.
I do not know what the situation is regarding other mining ships…but ‘raised across the board’ is certainly not true.
There’s not much difference, despite what you’ll hear from some doomcriers. Everything that was happening on your killboard in 2017 is still happening. Some specific changes are that wardec eligibility does require a citadel now, and citadels carry a guaranteed “Quantum Core” loot drop. The end result of that was consolidation of various merc corps into larger corp/alliances which basically just hunt or extort every citadel they can find that’s not well defended.
Mining vessels were rebalanced, so most of them have some EHP buffs, but it hasn’t made much overall difference:
Some changes were made to high sec security status consequences, and Alpha players were limited to not being able to set their safety to Red (to commit criminal actions). They also nerfed WCS so targets are easier to pin down.
Player count is down from 2017 (when you were last active), but that’s been the course of EVE for over a decade. It’s actually more due to them trying to “rebalance” various economic issues than it has anything to do with PvP.
As usual, you’ll hear every variety of opinion depending who you listen to. But the overall effect of changes since you last played haven’t stopped any of your preferred activities.
I know that this will come as a huge shock to you, but the game has actually existed for about 18 years before you came around. Yes, it’s true. If you need to sit down and take a pause, I understand.
Mining barge EHP has been buffed a few times. Barges received a buff across the board in 2009/2010, and then again in 2012, when they were put in their defensive “tiers.” Then miners were complaining that they “had to” use Procurers/Skiffs to not get ganked so much that CCP caved and gave Covetors/Hulks extra low slots in 2016. Now, most recently, barge EHPs were effectively doubled except for the tanky versions, which went kind of plus/minus depending on fit, but they were already so strong defensively that it doesn’t really matter. Your Procurer gained 50,000 EHP before it lost around 10,000.
There was the hull resist buff, battleship EHP mod bonuses, various slot changes and random +HP additions to specific hulls (especially faction/navy variants) over the past few years, which is the period of time the OP is asking about. Everything on average has become about 2-3x more survivable since the game’s early years, but damage hasn’t really kept up, even though it doesn’t feel that way because everyone just gang-bangs their targets/enemies now whereas in the past the solo/small gang game was much more prevalent.
So what ? The guy says in the OP he last played in 2018…and wanted to know of changes since then.
Again…unless you are unfamiliar with calendars and dates…that is before 2018.
So no…that you choose to totally ignore what I said and introduce some ‘I’m right about absolutely everything’ red herring is no great ‘shock’ to me at all. Its the dishonest style I’ve become used to from you.
Proc was the only nerf/buff//actual nerf to ehp. All the others were actual buffs. Folks used procs cause the ehp was better than the expensive ships so ccp “fixed” it
I made multiple examples of post-2018 changes in my last paragraph. You tried to invalidate my claim by bringing up a single exception, which is in fact highly debatable in itself since accepting what happened to the Procurer as a “nerf” relies on fitting it in a very specific way, since the two mid slots it lost were offset by the addition of a low slot, more base EHP, and an improved ship HP bonus.
Everything is just “me, me, me” with you. My fast-align Gnosis means everything is like this, my battle of Finanar means everything is like that, my Procurer EHP becoming lower means that CCP didn’t boost ship EHP across the board multiple times. You’re like a two-year-old baby that instantly loses total awareness of the world around it the moment you cover its eyes in a game of peekaboo.
You said ‘across the board’. I simply commented that it was not ‘across the board’. I was correct. But…instead of admitting I am right, your thinking is more along the lines of…
" I can’t actually fault the person on issue X…so let’s instead have a sly introduction of somewhat related issue Y for which comments about X would be nonsense, and thus using this red herring appear to have been right all along "
You have been rumbled. Get over it…rather than falling back on an ’ I’m a vet, therefore I am more infallible than the Pope’ stance.
But the OP is not asking about the multiple times this or that happened…he says he last played in 2018 and wants to know what happened since. And your statement says " but they raised EHP across the board multiple times and especially for mining/industrial hulls, so you need more shooters now."…and last I heard ‘now’ is not past tense.
But you can’t just admit being wrong…so let me know when the hole you are digging reaches Sydney Opera House.
