Nerf Ganking Megathread

Communications Center Crime & Punishment
1059

I think one of the biggest reasons people perceive ganking as unfair is because they fail to look at it as a form of asymmetrical game play. Concord provides swift, certain, and severe punishment, which pushes gankers into cheap glass cannons, which are exceptionally hard to counter in a straight up fight without using specialized fits that are bad at other stuff (like hauling, mining, missioning, etcetera). So, we wind up in a situation with players being unable to beat these extremely specialized glass cannons in a DPS race, and then them saying, “ganking is unfair -I didn’t even have a chance!”

Of course, this is silly way of looking at things. True, you had no chance in a DPS race, but why the ■■■■ are you trying to beat gankers in a DPS race? It’s silly. If you can’t beat someone at their game, don’t play their game. Simple as that.

When it comes down to it, success for gankers is measured in kills and profit (and fun), and success for you is measured in survival. Thus, in order to beat gankers, you don’t need to beat them in a DPS race, you just have to not get killed.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), it is exceedingly easy to reduce your chances of being ganked to damn near zero if you know what you’re doing (see my first post in this thread for strats and tips). In fact, it is so easy to negate the risk of ganking, one could argue that ganking needs to be buffed in order to properly balance the activity. I know many people would consider this to be a ludicrous assertion. But I maintain that the reality of the situation is not that ganking is unfair, but that people erroneously perceive it as unfair.

Anyway, I could go on, but let me end with this. Additional nerfs to ganking will not make it more fair, nor will it improve perceptions of fairness. I mean, if people can look at an activity that is so heavily balanced in favor of prey, and conclude that the inverse is true, how will additional nerfs change that? Hell, additional nerfs actually give ammunition to the nerf-gankers. You see, nerfs force gankers to coalesce into larger and larger groups in order to take down prey, which increases perceptions of unfairness due to the number of gankers that were thrown at them. And this is one of the reasons why we find ourselves in this perpetual cycle of “one more nerf.”

Sigh, I just hope it doesn’t end with suicide ganking as we know it being destroyed.

@Destiny_Corrupted By the way, could you link your post about the insurance change again. I want to get a screenshot.

3 Likes
1060

Im not saying that a solo player should be able to take out twenty ships. What i am saying is for example a fleet of twenty ships camps a gate in high sec then when someone warps into that system like Oipo they are instantly killed then Concord warp in and kill the gankers just for them to do it again. Even if you are in a fleet and have a corp behind you there is nothing anyone can do since gates are camped. If it was in areas like exploring sites or mine fields then that is one thing and its fair and on the pilot but when its on a gate or station and there is nothing that can be done what so ever no matter what you do that is when its unfair

1061

I am referring to a solo player trying to warp out or do anything during a high sec gate camp.

1062
  • You can fit max tank on your haulers
  • Use travel fits on your PvE ships
  • break up your cargo into multiple loads so that you aren’t profitable
  • try using a slippery ship to slip past them
  • let someone else shake the bushes (i.e. wait for them to pick up a criminal timer from ganking someone else, and then go).
  • Use intel tools such as Eve Gatecamp Check to identify and avoid gatecamps altogether.
  • Pay someone else to haul your stuff.
  • Use HS to HS wormholes to circumvent the gatecamp.
  • Use instadock and instant undock bookmarks to avoid getting caught on stations
  • learn when and how to use your session invulnerability timer (if you want to know more, just ask)

People die to gate camps because they are lazy, impatient, and/or lacking in knowledge.

2 Likes
1063

I am a solo player, and I encountered a Highsec gate camp today. This gatecamp was turbo charged, defended by gate guns, faction police, and CONCORD. The leader of the gatecamp was a 2009 veteran, with extensive experience in wormholes and lowsec. Meanwhile, I am just a silly newgirl, a 2018 rookie with basically no experience outside of Highsec. Instead of whining and crying about boohoohooo solo players can’t do anything, I killed the gate campers (on both sides of the gate).

The moral of the story is this: stop whining.

With the right attitude, you can be cool, like me!

:cool: :princess: :ice_cube:

4 Likes
1064

Huh. Almost like you could warp to a celestial and dscan the gate…

Almost like you could use F10 and find out if peeps are dying in the system.

And yea, sometimes you get caught and killed. Why should you be able to 100% get away? ROFL.

1 Like
1065

The difference is also the ship I was flying an unarmed freighter and the gate was not heavily defended by concord. There is a major difference from being able to have a chance and no chance at all

1066

You cant dscan the gate in another system at all and F10 is a regular map it doesnt show gankers

1067

It’s your choice to fly an unarmed ship.

This was your choice.

Take responsibility for your choices.

1 Like
1068

ROFL. Of course you can’t. Thems the risks you take of jumping thru without a scout or scouting yourself.

Oh? F10 doesn’t show were gankers/pirates could be? Huh. Lemme just click this button that says ships destroyed in the last hour. Huh. 76 ships lost in Uedama in the past hour? I wonder if the gankers are there? What could be tipping me off?

LOL learn to EVE kthx. You’re embarrassing.

3 Likes
1069

I was in uedama the other day in my alt , two of us in logi trying to save ships , we would have saved more ships if people fitted stuff to their ships , one guy carrying 1.3b in loot in an unfitted ship, we came very close to saving him , fitting his ship would have helped.

I felt like asking for the repair paste back I used on him.

Can’t see anything thing wrong with this game play the gankers fitted their ships and followed game rules and mechanics , we fitted our ships to try and stop them , only one person was wrong .

Now I need the killrights from this guy so we can have more fun killing the gankers before they gank :kissing_closed_eyes:

4 Likes
1070

Suicide ganking is a problem and will scare away casual mature players. It’s way too cheap. Nowadays people regularly gank empty freighters and T2 fitted marauders just for the luls. They gain nothing economically but around 10 destroyers are usually enough to gank a marauder. That’s 200mill. You can make 400mill in one hour and you can vaporize 2bill ships.

It’s geting to the point where you might aswell attach a 300mill price tag to blow up any ship in hisec if you accept the price. It’s not very balanced. As a hardcore EVE player, you might be so integrated in the EVE world that you don’t take into account casual players that doesn’t have alot of time to play, perhaps they have family, children, and play a couple of hours every now and then. And just want to enjoy a little solo play.

This player then loging in for a couple of hours at the weekend, some hardcore ganking clan decides to blow up this persons ship, freighter, for 4bill+, making no money from it.

Every guy in the clan makes 400mill/hour if they want. Their price for killing this casual gamer is 15-20mill out of their money. It’s nothing for their combined gank. Just a little fun kill.

This forces every player to have to become a hardcore player to even enjoy the game. You gotta be in a dedicated clan, community. If you only have a couple of hours every weekend, this game is unplayable for these people.

They will be bullied out of the game by nolifers or nerds that play Eve 24/7 and gank people for no reason other than just that they can. Some of these people are so integrated in the Eve world that they attach their personal egos to the game. They want to showoff or have power within the game.

Nobody should be allowed to play without me allowing it! It’s not very player friendly or casual friendly.

If the game was like it used to, that there was a risk assement for sucide ganks. You would for example pick your targets on if the gank was profitable.

Then suicide ganking becomes fair. Someone hauling 3-5bill worth of cargo in a freighter. Sure.

But when you see these killmails on empty freighters being targeted with full tank, just for the giggles. While these players may enjoy it, HAH! we ■■■■■■ him, lololol, imagine the salt bro!

It destroys the community for new casual player retention.

If you are a really hardcore gamer of Eve or maybe not even that but let’s say you’ve played for a very long time, got alot of resources into the game, know alot of people in it.

You might get to a point where you start geting bored and targeting “noobs” or “casuals” and ruining their game experience might be more tempting just to get a buzz.

But this is very bad game design. When empty freighters and other ships start geting blown up. Less people will fly them, player retention will decline. Wouldn’t it be more fun if there was more ships flying in EVE and where you hunted blingy ships that made you a profit, instead of just blowing up empty ships for the luls.

The game should be balanced so that you’re punished for ganking in hisec. I can literally pay 50bucks from my job and have enough to join and gank 200times. Potentially me and some buddies could then kill 200 empty freighters, destroying 1trillion in value, just out of some luls and spending 50bucks on the game.

It’s bad game design.

There’s no progression in this game for a casual player. You could spend every weekend for 3hours casually and after having played for 3months you get your whole progression just instantly deleted, because some clan of more dedicated players decided to spend 20mill each for the luls.

I don’t understand how anyone can’t see this is bad for the game. What would it hurt you or your ganking community if the game mechanics punished you to pick profitable targets.

Sure it may be a loss in total but 20mill for a catalyst that’s like throwing 50cents away. Nobody cares about that, you make so much if you’re a hardcore eve player.

But for the casual geting 3-4bill deleted, that might be months of his playtime progress.

This isn’t balanced, it’s very bad for the game, something should be looked at or done about this.

If a freighter is empty it should not be targeted unless the person involved gets punished in a similar way or way worse at least.

The economy is in such a way that you can use so cheap ships and band together with other people, this game is unplayable if you are not in a huge clan.

Casual player, forget it. You’re unable to play this game because of how the economy and suicide ganking works in hisec.

If you want to be a hardcore gamer that wanna join a big alliance and make a name for yourslef in EVE, you should move onto null lowsec and fight for your space there.

Not sit and hunt new casual players in hisec deleting all their progression by tossing 50cents down a drain just for the luls.

1 Like
1071

Just buy a permit for 10 mil pocket ISKies and you’ll be fine. :wink:

2 Likes
1072

I’m not triggered i’m simply stating it’s bad game design for casual people. There are no issues keeping suicide ganking for profit alive and kicking for those that enjoy that type of gameplay. Just nerf the no profit suicide ganks and make them more balanced.

1073

Ultimately pvers are going to have to band together and gank the gankers until THEY quit

1074

This right here is an attempt to deny the agency of others being able to engage the sandbox as they wish – which firmly sites in the alone mentality. There are a plethora of other games that fit that mentality, but Eve is about player agency and being able to use in-game mechanics to express one’s will.

This perception does not match my experience. There are groups out there in various portions of space (high, low, and null) that don’t require you to be a “hardcore player”, but are reasonable people and understand some folks aren’t as glued to Eve as others. And they are still capable of being thorny enough to generally avoid most – but never 100% – conflicts.

But it still fundamentally requires one to have the mentality of “I’m engaging with the sandbox, which necessarily means I can’t always get my way always 100% of the time, so what tradeoffs am I willing to make, and what does that say about me?”. That’s what makes Eve great.

1 Like
1075

LOL ok bud. You don’t gotta lie :smiley:

Just learn to EVE :smiley:

ROFL. Where did the bad ganker blap you?

They do all the time. You underestimate the stupidity of peeps :smiley: They haul billions in untanked T1 indys on autopilot. They deserve death.

Not really. But nice try :smiley: I get you’re trolling tho. 3/10 for the effort.

Only if you’re stupid, which you appear to be :smiley:

Why you hauling 3 bil at one time in the first place? Da quafe? Learn to EVE kthx.

Of course it should :smiley:

I solo all day every day for now mate :smiley:

Ah you’re a krab. Should have led with that.

That is literally EVE :smiley:

You are triggered :smiley: How do you determine no profit? LOL.

Yea, that ain’t gonna happen.

1076

Pretty good post overall on the issue, though there are things I disagree with, Io Koval picked out the main issues. Some gankers make a megaton of ISK from this, meaning that they can and do gank for lol’s and not just against people like me for example but anyone, this ruins the game in terms of balance.

It is a point that I often make that the balance is out of kilter if empty freighters get blown up often…

I was speaking to one guy in the AG chat channel who was doing hisec Trig sites in a Marauder, he can’t do this any more. All of the Caldari systems have gangs of gankers ready for Marauders. And it is not especially easy to stop them, and if you use Bastian module you are a sitting duck. I guess that guy is not long for Eve…

1077

Okay, that is a lot to unpack. So, lets start with one thing.

Ganking is Too Cheap - A Counter Argument

The nerf ganking crowd love pointing to low ship costs of gank fleets, and saying that that is evidence that ganking needs to be balanced. I dispute this argument for two reasons. First, it completely neglects all other operating costs. Second, it neglects all the other factors that go into successfully executing a gank (i.e. time, effort, skill, player numbers), and presupposes that outcomes should be balanced based solely on ship cost. But let’s take a closer look at each.

The cost of executing a gank cannot be measured solely in ship costs.

Ship cost is but one factor that goes into the cost of executing a gank. In addition to that, you have operating expenses which can include:

  • Plex for training up characters (which includes the costs for scanners/scouts)
  • Keeping characters plexed so that you can multibox them (SP farming them can dramatically reduce the cost, but it will also increase your initial investment, require a time investment, and can result in a loss depending on things like how much effort you are putting into it, whether or not you can afford to buy or sell at the right times, and whats going on with plex and skill injector costs. True, SP farming is a great option, but certainly not without it’s drawbacks and it’s own costs).
  • Structure cost for placing structures near gates so that you can have a tether, short warp, and no cost cloning)
  • the logistic cost of staging thousands of ships (which require training up a freighter pilot and buying a freighter, or paying someone to do it for you).
  • the cost of tags to keep your suicide point’s sec status high enough so that he can chill on gates.
  • the cost of ganking unprofitable targets in order to keep fleet members from getting bored and leaving, which can reduces your engagement profile (P.S. the idea that gankers gank empty freighters for the lulz is a misconception. There is both a ship cost and an opportunity cost in doing so. So, there is a reason why they do it, whether you know the reason or not).

So, I reject this idea that the cost of ships used in a gank is the only cost that goes into ganking. It’s the argumentative equivalent of saying that it cost McDonalds 47 cents to make a hamburger because that’s their ingredient cost. And, if that wasn’t already reason enough, the nerf-gankers certainly like to cherry pick their examples, don’t they. When gankers don’t have enough pilots to gank a ship using catalysts (the ship that offers the best DPS/isk ratio), they have to use more expensive ships with higher DPS’s, but lower DPS/isk ratios. But let’s not talk about the ganks that require 1.5 billion isk worth of ships, because that doesn’t support our argument that ganking is too cheap.

And right about now is when I’m sure people will start saying that you can reduce costs by forming fleets full of real players -which is true. But it’s not the gotcha that they think it is. Because even though that reduces the isk cost of a gank, it also increases the personnel cost (i.e. splitting profits between multiple people, and potentially ganking unprofitable targets to keep the fleet from getting bored and leaving, which reduces your engagement profile), and requires that you can actually get enough people together to take on the larger targets (which is easier for larger groups like Safety. and null bloc ganking SIG’s, but impossible for the smaller groups and independent operators.) Moreover, this also ties into other ways that things can, are, and should be balanced. Outcomes should not be balanced on solely on ship costs.

Balance should not be based solely on ship costs

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again -I am adamantly opposed to the idea that outcomes should be determined solely by ship cost. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think cost can, does, and should play a role. However, if you allow ship cost to play too big of a role, it will negate factors such as player skill, and reduce outcomes down to who did the most grinding, or spent the most money. Now, I have seen players argue that ship cost should play a bigger role in determining outcomes, but they’re garbage people whose opinions should be disregarded. I kid. For real though, I don’t want want to play a grind-to-win/pay-to-win game. I know some people are down for that, but I’m not. Fortunately for me, however, Eve is still a skill based game, and I would like to keep it that way.

But I digress, multiple factors go into determine outcomes, which include:

  • Player numbers
  • Player Skill
  • Character Skill
  • Execution
  • Terms of Engagement
  • Choice of Ship Fits and Fleet Comps
  • and, of course, ship cost.

So, I dispute the idea that you can determine whether something is properly balanced by looking at one factor -especially when that factor is indirectly proportional to another factor, which increases difficulty. I mean, yes, you can get the cost of gank fleet down really low by bringing 40 dudes… but that also means that you had to cat wrangle 40 freaking dudes, and that it took forty freaking dudes to kill one guy!

Is Freighter Cost Too High?

Now, all of this is not to say that I think everything is balanced as it should be. In fact, I personally think that freighter cost has gotten a little out of hand, and can see how people can compare the cost of freighter to a cost of a gank fleet, and assume something is out of whack. However, I personally believe that the solution is not to nerf ganking into the ground, but to bring the cost of freighters back more in line with what I consider to be a healthy risk to reward ratio.

Whew. That was a lot, and I only discussed one point.

2 Likes
1078

Oh dear…, how to go off on the wrong foot.

The issue you have is if your activity starts costing CCP players, then this is a self-inflicted harm you are doing to your game play.

I used to operate T2 fitted Marauders and while people used to try and mess with me for FY fun I never felt that I was at risk of being ganked, especially when so many gankers were moaning about how easy it was to fit an effective Marauder with t2 modules. Which is your argument in reverse…

Now I would not run those ships at all even T2 fit because the risk is too high.

Stating this is somehow calling for a nerf, no it is not, it is saying there is an issue…, the issue is of course that there are a lot of old players in this game with a huge amount of ISK and they have no restrictions on their behaviour due to this. I have a feeling that some players who left made massive donations to certain people, just a guess of course.

The example of that Marauder pilot is that it will be dealt with by the prey disappearing, I don’t think that is a good thing, no matter how much you want to spin it. Sorry…

Though I should also say that I certainly understand your point of view and see where you are coming from.