I am confident that a good game designer would or will address anything that has gotten out of control, as in griefing - which is a very different thing compared to hisec pvp referred to as ganking. It’s not the Aiko’s and the James’s and the Adrians who define hisec reality, for instance. That’s (hopefully) not what is being discussed here.
They come in many flavors. As an example, some resort to another form of soft extorsion called “rent”. Some don’t. Since sovereignty, the key part of nullsec gameplay, requires numbers, it’s only normal that alliances exist. Also for their day to day activities, like income generation, there is safety in numbers and organization. You know that, you’ve lived there. Not sure what point or connection you were trying to make.
Pretty close. If you lived nearby I’d come over and give you a box of cigars
Ouch, that is a very very different story, starting with a funny scam but ending with griefing. It also had nothing to do with pvp or ganking.
Wheat and chaff. I know it sounds tough, but I think this game deserves preservation. The game selects its players, not vice versa.
Nah, views don’t matter if they start by denying reality. It’s just a token of entitlement. I started this game when its reputation was long settled, with wardecs all over hisec, no safety settings, concordokken still a thing, and the rest of the tough aspects. Somehow I settled into a mindset of “okay, let’s see if this thing can beat me”. And the rest is, as they say, history.
It has nothing do with what system one crappy player hangs out in, it’s to do with CCP historically allowing certain players to drive the narrative about what the game is to the detriment of everyone else, and it’s mostly null groups and their offshoots, of which ganking is one.
Contrary to what you’ve been told, ganking was not always like is it now. The chances of you getting ganked in a worthless ship were basically nil. Ganking used to be a way to attack operations in highsec and to generate income. Now the vast majority is ganking is designed to test the line of griefing, to find ways to make targets respond and to wind them up enough to make their responses angry so they can be mocked. It’s why they go after streamers a lot too, because it’s easy to record the reactions in real time.
I guarantee I log on and travel more that you. I get that you logged on one time and got told some stuff by Aiko but you’re not an expert. You’re not even a competent amateur, you’re barely more than a poorly trained alt. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t know the first thing about the vast majority of EVE so excuse me if I don’t take you seriously when you try to explain EVE to me.
So no data then. Even if data from other games was relevant, which it’s not, you can’t really compare a game like counterstrike since counterstrike is pure combat PvP game with EVE is a sandbox game with a heavy mix of PvE and PvP content - with PvP covering vastly more than just “pew pew”.
Right, but this is CCP and it has got out of control and nothing has been done. CCP won’t do anything until some poor kid offs himself after being harassed in one of the ganker channels. Then much like with Erotica1 they’ll suddenly care about psychologically torturing other players.
The point I was making is that sov null groups built up enough power with the developers to convince them that what nullsec wants is the definition of EVE, which is why null groups have repeatedly been handed advantages at the detriment of the rest of the game. Citadels even allowed these groups to start profiting off of highsec and when highsec groups put up towers with zero taxes to compete with null towers like TTT, null groups had CCP change the game to add a minimum fee so they could no longer be undercut.
A lot of gankers come from teh same group and they’ve manage to push this narrative that being blown up anywhere is the core of EVE, but historically that was not the case. So claims that everyone who thinks ganking should nerfed are somehow ruining the core design of EVE are baseless.
It’s exactly the same. Ganking started out as an in-game thing done for in-game reaons and in-game rewards. Then they realised they can start sending mails, badgering them in local and inviting them to channels to get reactions out of them which they then collated and published. Over time the in-game reasons have mostly vanished and ganking is now predominantly done to generate those reactions.
It doesn’t sound tough, it sounds arrogant and ignorant. It sounds like you’ve decided that what you like about the game is what needs to be preserved, even though to those of us who arrived here in the early days (I started in 2005) it’s not a core part of the game. There’s no real difference between you and someone who wants their PvE playstyles protected other than you’re arrogant enough to think the playstyle you like is the core of the game.
Amusingly one of the big USPs of EVE right from the start was a player-driven economy with limited developer intervention and you don’t seem to have any issues with them repeatedly shitting all over that. I guess not everything needs to be preserved, eh?
When did you join? The 2010-2012 cohort with the majority of the current gankers who claim the game must not be changed except if it benefits them?
That’s a fair point, but up to a point. Some of what you are stating was not because of any particular wishes of certain nullsec groups but rather emergent gameplay - unforeseen by CCP or even ignored when they were warned by the same nullsec groups that the danger existed and how it would be used. That’s what you get when 400 or so game guardians are up against thousands of bright players.
Okay, let’s bring back player bounties then. I always thought of removing them as a huge mistake (and false reasons), with the pinnacle being to first make rookies exempt of player bounties (poor kids couldn’t handle the “Wanted” sign on their pics, apparently, oh dear oh dear, just like some fortnite players can’t handle their losses eh ?).
Now that we’re on that point, perhaps it would be wiser to consider the removal of at least some of the mollycoddling and the safety lines that were introduced.
And here I had hopes of actually having a decent conversation/debate with you. Alas, we reached the apparently inevitable divide again. My view on EvE is very straightforward, and the one I embraced and loved all these years: EvE is Darwinian in nature, it’s a survival of the fittest game. One can handle it, or one can’t. I can’t handle an FPS, but I wouldn’t call the typical FPS player macho, arrogant or ignorant.
I haven’t said a word about the economy in this thread. I’ve said plenty about it when the changes were rolled out, and none of it was CCP-friendly. Don’t look for opponents on your own side of the fence, Lucas. Just saying. Take a breath, not everyone with a view differing from yours has to be your enemy. Only if you insist.
P.S. As a single account guy I can say in all honesty and transparency I never ganked in hisec, despite me joining with the apparently bad cohort of 2011
Sure. Contrary to popular believe I have no issue with reducing safety as a general rule. I didn’t even historically have a problem with ganking until it got turned into a sport built around griefing players. Even in this thread I’ve suggested just limiting ganking to larger, higher classes of ships, even if that means putting cargo value limits on the protected ships.
I don’t see why that stops it. It’s not an attack it genuinely sounds arrogant and ignorant.
And that’s fine, but it’s still your view. It’s not automatically the objective reality of EVE simply because it’s the view you’ve chosen.
I’m not, I just genuinely don’t remember seeing you kick up even a fraction of the fuss you kick up in ganking threads when CCP gutted actual core elements of EVE.
Ill take your word for it. And as for the cohort, while obviously not everyone is going to be the same, there definitely is a strong correlation between players who started 2010-2012 and the aggressively rigid views on ganking from people who like to “collect tears”.
It’s something I noted a few years back on here, and I’ve never quite managed to nail down what caused it but my feeling is that either there was a particular marketing campaign around things that were attractive to griefers or some other game closed down and kicked a bunch of people over here.
I requested earlier some info from you. You stated that it’s somewhere in this threadnaught. I’ve gone back about 1000 posts and haven’t found the links.
Could you kindly link for me the update statements for CCP that support your position that ganking is killing the game. I’m very curious to read this.
I’ve already linked to the fanfest presentation and the blog posts about ganking multiple times in this thread, though I’m pretty sure I haven’t said the words “killing the game”.
Right. It is how I experience the game. And it’s a prevalent experience among the people I play with (including those in hisec). And if I dig long and hard enough, it’s probably possible to find quotes from the original designers in that sense too. And it’s definitely my wish that the game doesn’t deteriorate into something that is less than tough, demanding and relentless (or elitist as some would have us believe).
A fuss ? Moi ? Admit it keeps you somewhat entertained. And when ccp ever dreams of touching stealth bombers in ways they don’t want to be touched, I’ll be there dropping extra ammo, LOL.
(I left out “around griefing players” in the quote because I disagree with that part)
Let’s say for instance that you are right, that that is what it turned into. The question then is "why did it turn into that type of ‘sport’. Could it be that perhaps that too is emergent gameplay caused by changes introduced to core gameplay elements by ccp ? What if those changes were reconsidered ? What if the reasons for those changes don’t hold up in hindsight ? Murphy’s law implies that when one iterates on a faulty system, the problems only get worse, right ?
It’s already “less than tough, demanding and relentless”. EVE is not a hard game and never has been.
Because players who thrive on griefing others but get banned from other games realised they don’t get banned for it here as long as they disguise it as gameplay. And they’ve repeatedly skirted the line with several people getting banned along the way.
So, as an example, the players who lose all they have when their cheap and ill chosen hauler gets blown up are all faking it ? Okay…
(I know you claim EvE was never a tough game. I find that claim funny. Perhaps you forgot your own start in EvE, your first bigger goals you tried to achieve. Whatever, it’s your opinion, you’re welcome to it).
Griefing is not allowed in EvE, never was. You mistake all ganking for griefing, and perhaps underestimate the level of roughness that is allowed in EvE as opposed to other games. As an other example, scamming (without exploits) is also allowed. But it may take another 4000 posts and lots of funny mushrooms before that finally starts sinking in.
But that’s not the game being hard, that’s just losses mattering early on.
I didn’t forget anything, it was just never a challenge. Admittedly I was already a veteran gamer and played multiple games competitively, but the hardest part about EVE is and has always been an unintuitive UX. As soon as you get past that the actual game loop is pretty easy. Once you start building up as well it rapidly becomes difficult to lose enough for it to actually matter unless you’re actively trying to lose stuff.
Is there a reason you use a lowercase ‘v’ btw?
Yes it is. I’m not mistaking anything. When you attack another player and your intention is to get an negative emotional reaction from that player so you can laugh about it with your mates, that is griefing. And that’s what most of ganking is built around. It’s not exactly hidden that they are “harvesting tears”.
Sure, and when Erotica1 departed from scamming for rewards and started doing it to get emotional reactions CCP banned him. Gankers still do the same thing, they just don’t push it quite as far most of the time so they walk on the very edge of the EULA.
Oh yes, just like Erotica1 was just “running a bonus room”. This is exatly the type of thing I mean when I say “they disguise it as gameplay”. If all they are doing is selling mining permits, why has their website always been a showcase of the most negative reactions they’ve managed to goad out of people?
Ask Aiko, who is in a better position to answer that than I will ever be. And please stop stretching the subject to include Erotica1 - that’s just silly. This is a thread about ganking.
You’re being disingenuous. We all know why, we all know that their aim was to generate these responses.
The comparison with Erotica1 is spot on though. It was a player seeking to upset other players covering it up by claiming gameplay reasons. You only don’t like it because it shatters the idea that claiming something is gameplay automatically stops it being griefiig.
There is more than the ring of truth to this position, Wadiest, if you substitute for ‘griefing’, ‘ganking’.
It was ganking itself which underwent change, in response to attempts by CCP to rein-in what was presented to it by some players as, basically, wholesale slaughter (which it has never been).
Each time a nerf to ganking was deployed, we pushed back in an effort to preserve the playstyle, whilst at the same time operating within the new parameters.
It was James 315 who organised the activity within Highsec at that time, drawing together previously disparate groups and solo players into a loose and broad-based coalition with shared objectives and interests.
He wrote a daily blog, Minerbumping, which drew and entertained many of his supporters (and not a few of the other sort…).
As far as Highsec is concerned, his achievement has been unparalleled. He started out as a lone capsuleer bumping miners in Arvasarus, in order to sell them Permits at 10 Mil a pop, and ended up fronting a huge organisation, known throughout New Eden. The nay-saying scallywags of our Official Opposition will struggle to achieve anything remotely as successful.
(He also gave me my first break as a Voice Actor - which eventually became a RL job - Ta’, James!)
So yes, emergent ganking gameplay has always been a response to a situation presented to the ganker, and quite beyond his control.
That so many of us have continued in spite of the nerfs and the hysterical, hyperbolic opposition sometimes seen on these boards is surely the best testament to our resolute and optimistic natures.
I know you got a lot of irons in the fire, with multiple convos going.
Could you do me a solid and please re-link the fanfest presentation from CCP. I’m very curious to watch it, and I have been unable to locate in this massive thread of over 8000 posts.
When did you join? The 2010-2012 cohort with the majority of the current gankers who claim the game must not be changed except if it benefits them?
