Proposal for Rebalancing of the Suicide Gank

Beatlise · June 24, 2022, 9:28am

I would like to submit a proposal for rebalancing the Gank in high sec space.
Also, I would like to get some data to help us plan for attracting and retaining new players. Please read that as well.

◆1. Problem Focus

1-1. Cost-effectiveness imbalance of Gank

Today, the mainstay of high-sec Ganker is the so-called "Void Catalyst" equipped with T2 Neutron Blaster & Void ammo, which can project high DPS at extremely low cost. This is a great advantage over other ships often used for Gank (HAM Caracal, Void Talos, etc.) in the following points.

High price efficiency per dps.
2.7 times more cost-effective than HAM Caracal and 4.5 times more cost-effective than Void Talos.
Fast alignment speed and warp speed, suitable for surprise attack on targets.
Warp in is 31% faster than HAM Caracal and 63% faster than Void Talos.
Very few skills required.
Can be use immediately with an alpha account of 1M invitation skill points. Or it can be use with about 20 days of skill training.

And, if we estimate the case of Gank in Uedama, the average loss ISK(*) for the target side, the minimum number of pilots and ISK are as follows.
(*Average loss ISK: 6/1/2022 - 6/17/2022 High sec only. And those that were not NPC kills, solo kills, or Jita kills.).

From Figures 1 and 2, the Void Catalyst is an extremely inexpensive investment with great kills and returns.
And a character to use this excellent ship is immediately possible with an Alpha account that has obtained 1M Invitational Skill Points. Even if you do not have Invitational Skill Points, approximately 20 days of training will suffice.
Therefore, the cost-effectiveness of Ganker is extremely unbalanced and there is room for rectification.

Also, since these ships and equipment can be used by alpha accounts, it is possible to delete a character whose SS has declined and create a new character to put into Gank.
If the play style of repeatedly creating and deleting characters (with alpha accounts that do not contribute to game sales) and ganking is rampant, then this is not a healthy way to play an online game.

1-2. CONCORD response time delay problem due to "CONCORD Pulling"

As has been discussed in past forums, the technique of delaying the arrival time of a CONCORD by approximately 6 seconds by performing a criminal act while the CONCORD is spawned on a different grid in the system, known as "CONCORD Pulling," is now legal.

Today, in space areas such as Uedama, it is a standard practice to perform a “CONCORD Pulling” before ganking the target. This allows for a more advantageous Gank situation than the game system was originally designed for.

However, in GM Arcade’s post…

After this post was made, several CSM members were quick to raise their concerns about the impact on everyday gameplay activities that this policy change would have.
There will be no changes to how support are policing CONCORD interaction and that ‘pulling’ CONCORD or defensive spawning of CONCORD is currently permitted but we reserve the right to change this at a future date.

This is an issue that should be fixed immediately, but (in my opinion) the CONCORD spawn logic is a code that has existed since the beginning of the service, and I suspect that it has become a legacy code that is difficult to fix today.
(For this reason, I would like to propose an improvement, not to fix the spawn logic, but simply to adjust the calculation of arrival time.)

1-3. Forcing values on players with different gameplay styles

Gank in high sec means interfering with the activities of a player who prefers production and PVE, which is against the morality of gameplay and amounts to harassment.
For example, if you ordered a player who wanted to enjoy PVP to ratting for 2 hours every day, or ordered him to get on a mining ship to mining moon resources, or ordered him to manage blueprints and production queues and refuel our structure, you would be tremendously harassed, right?

The essence of EVE should be “freedom”. No one should be forced to play a different style of game by other players, and if they are forced to do so in a humiliating manner, they should be retaliated against in a reasonable manner.
However, in the current environment, the means of retaliation are not functioning. (Continued in section 1-4)

1-4. "Kill Rights" as a means of retaliation is almost non-functional.

A "Kill Right" will be issued to the player who ganks a player in high sec. Normally, this would be a means of retaliation on the part of the victim, but the kill right only flags the other player as a suspect, allowing him or her to escape immediately by station docking or gate jumping.
In addition, the "Kill Rights" becomes almost worthless if the player escapes into low-sec or null-sec space, where it is possible to legally attack other players in the first place.

1-5. The player's SS has become mere decoration.

Even "outlaw, wanted of the galaxy" players with a SS of -10.0 can enter Jita 4-4 and shop.
In addition, they can tether themselves to the structure near the gate and ambush their next prey.
In other words, this is like Sansha Kuvakei going in and out of the Caldari capital, enjoining beer and hotdogs at a downtown food stall and looking for the next slave, to use an analogy.
Can this situation be allowed to continue? Isn't this a dereliction of duty on the part of CONCORD?

◆2. Improvement plan

2-1. Add restriction on alpha clones

(Current) Alpha clones can be safety set to red.
(New) Alpha clones cannot be safety set to red.

Situations requiring safety set to red are limited to use of AOE weapons, Ganks in high sec, POD kills in low sec against opponents who have not established a limited engagement flag, etc.

Therefore, even with the safety set to red disallowed, the content that will be restricted to regular alpha account players who do not Gank is very minimal.

*Furthermore, with this change, characters who do Gank will have the honor of contributing to the sales and viability of the game by virtue of the fact that they are paying for an Omega account.

2-2. Reduce CONCORD arrival time by 30%.

(Current) Arrival time (s) = (1 - system SS)^2*100
(New) Arrival time (s) = {(1 - system SS)^2*100}*0.7

Estimates show that a 30% reduction in CONCORD arrival time would reduce the arrival time for each star system by approximately 5 to 8 seconds. (SS0.5 star system becomes equivalent to 0.6 star system).

This is an improvement in the risk/reward ratio of Ganker and an alternative to the aforementioned “CONCORD Pulling” problem (delay of about 6 seconds over the original arrival time).

2-3. Improve the efficacy of "Kill Rights".

Extend the validity period of kill right granted in high sec to 360 days. (Currently 30 days)
Display the login status and current whereabouts of the target player in the “Your Kill Rights” column.
If kill rights are sold to all capsuleers, information on kill rights (price, player name, login status, current location) should be able to be retrieved by the API.
Grant a 60-second weapon timer when kill right is exercised.

Enable content such as “victims retaliate against perpetrators” and “good PVP players track down and shoot down criminals”.
It make difficult to escape by station-docking and gate-jumping when exercising the kill right.

2-4. Ban on high sec NPC station entry and tethering from structure for minus SS players (either plan A or B)

Plan A) Outlaw players (SS-5.0 or lower)
Plan B) Players sanctioned by will existing navies as shown in the chart below.

Improve the risk/reward ratio by increasing the effort of high-sec Ganker. And minus SS players will have the honor of becoming a true “outlaw, a wanted of the galaxy”.
Increased demand for clone soldier tags will encourage more players to going to low sec.

◆3. Request for data extraction

I would like the following data to be disclosed as information for further rebalancing of Ganker and for consideration of measures to attract new players in the future.

3-1. Number of players estimated to have lost motivation due to high-sec Gank.

e.g.) Number of players who have been within 1 year from the date of character creation to the last login date, have not logged in for more than 1 month, have a SS higher than 0.0, and have been killed by another player in high sec at least once.

3-2. Number of Gankers who increased with the implementation of alpha accounts.

e.g.) Number of players who are alpha accounts, have a SS lower than 0.0, and have at least 10 kills on other players in high sec.

3-3. Number of Gankers who are active Omega account players.

e.g.) Omega accounts that are more than 1 year old from the date of character creation, and whose last login date is within 3 days, and whose SS is lower than 0.0, and the number of players who have 100 or more kills on high sec against other players in the last 1 year.

3-4. Number of deleted Ganker

e.g.) Number of characters who have 10 or more kills on other players in high sec and whose SS is lower than 0.0 and who have already been deleted.

3-5. Evidence that high-sec Ganker contributes to the EVE economy

e.g.) the difference or ratio between the total loss amount in high-sec space due to Gank and the total loss amount due to low/null/wormhole fighting, etc.

In recent years, as online gaming has become more common, especially among light users, the percentage of players who are not comfortable with the idea of being PK'd has increased. MMORPG operators are therefore increasingly making PK impossible in order to attract and retain more users.
It is time for EVE ONLINE to consider whether or not it should continue to operate under its old policy against PKs.

That is all.
Thank you for your consideration.

Etch_Masuka · June 24, 2022, 9:39am

You were doing ok until this point. I was actually thinking to myself how nice it was to be reading a post about ganking that was in the main factually based and researched.

Then you went and threw any credibility you were building up out the window.

Aiko_Danuja · June 24, 2022, 9:47am

Why not reduce arrival time by 100%?

Donatien_Alphonse_Francois · June 24, 2022, 10:04am

While we’re at it, why doesn’t CCP just implement a system where I can pay for gank tokens where I can just use a gank token to make another player’s ship explode in hisec without any other input from myself?

Dracvlad · June 24, 2022, 10:08am

I liked your post for the high level of analysis of the issues, the detail on the Catalyst was spot on as were many of your other observations. You are also correctly focussing on the balance issues of ganking as it is now and you really did a great job. CCP would be wise to look at this and open their eyes a bit.

Ganking is part of this game, but I have been pointing out that the balance is out of kilter, and I wanted changes to help counter play and get a better balance. I have said it many times, and always get hit by accusations that I want to remove ganking.

At the end of the day I am not happy with this.

Eve is a PK game, though on reflection you are not saying that it isn’t.

But apart from feeling I had that was a great post.

NB. In the past I might have engaged on such a well put together post on this subject, however due to the unmoderated nastiness of many of the forum posters including an immediate attack post on me, I do not currently post on this subject in any detail. I have already made my views known many times.

I hope the OP continues to explain the points he made.

And I hope we see better responses than stating that any balance adjustments are an end to ganking, which is weak, very weak…

NB2. I see the emotive name calling is getting up a head of steam as per normal…

Destiny_Corrupted · June 24, 2022, 10:11am

Dracvlad · June 24, 2022, 10:12am

Very much this in regards to your reaction:

Gerard_Amatin · June 24, 2022, 10:13am

The only rebalance of suicide ganks that will make people who get hit by suicide ganks happy is if suicide ganks are impossible.

Remove red safeties, remove illegal attacks, remove CONCORD – there’s no reason for a delayed punishing police force to exist if illegal attacks were just impossible from the start!

Personally I do not think that CONCORD or illegal attacks should be removed, but why set small insignificant steps towards that point? Why repeatedly ask for one more nerf to improve your situation? And once it turns out that suicide attacks still happen after that nerf, one more nerf. Extra EHP for mining ships made people use more ships to suicide attack them, yet people now use more catalysts to still destroy them? What about another nerf?

CONCORD delay too long? Why not make it shorter? Oh, people now again use more ships? What about another nerf? Alphas not allowed to gank? Oh, people use Omegas? What about another nerf?

Stop asking for small nerfs that only increase the amount of ships required but do not stop ganks from happening. Go all the way. Ask for removal of high sec ganking. That is what you want.

Sasha_Nemtsov · June 24, 2022, 10:14am

Although I disagree with your proposals, I acknowledge the passion with which you have submitted them.

Might you have a word with @Jesse_W_James about presenting proposals in detail?

Destiny_Corrupted · June 24, 2022, 10:32am

Anyone who thinks this is a real post should read A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.

On the internet and in politics it’s a form of consensus/compromise trolling in which an untenable position is legitimized by putting forth a series of lesser positions that are much easier to hypothetically agree with, and this shifts the baseline toward the extremist view by making you “agree” that the proposer is “making valid points” even if you “don’t personally agree with them.”

It’s a very well-crafted troll, and this is going to be like a 1,200-post thread because 95% of the people are going to fall for it solely by virtue of the benefit of the doubt just because it’s written well.

Basically it comes down to a “well, you seem to agree that maybe increasing the costs of Catalysts could be a valid change, and maybe slightly decreasing CONCORD response time could be a valid change, so surely you can also agree a little bit that EVE shouldn’t necessarily be a 100% PK griefer game like it is right now” kind of thing.

Etch_Masuka · June 24, 2022, 10:41am

Ok. I’m bored so Ill engage.

The word “balance” has now come up. Do you really think that we are already so far out of balance that 4 nerfs are required in order to bring things back in line. Especially in the context of writhing the last year alone mining barges and exhumers getting an EHP buff and battleships getting a chunk of their resists back?

There is not one thing for gankers in that proposals. It’s all stick. We are both proposing to lock the play style behind a paywall and nerf the play style at the same time. Pay more…….get less.

So lets look at the proposals in detail. Firstly alpha accounts cant set to red safety. Frankly I don’t think you have demonstrated that alpha accounts are a problem in this regard. Your own figures show that currently it takes 30 t2 void catalysts to gank a freighter in Uedama. It’s against the EULA to multiboxers alphas so someone has managed to organise 30 individual pilots to catch a specific target at a gate. That doesn’t feel like gameplay that should be penalised in a game like EVE. It’s gameplay that should be encouraged and rewarded. People working together for a common purpose. Groups like that are common in null but much less common in highsec. Forcing those players into omega accounts wont reduce the frequency of the ganks. It will just mean that instead of 30 individual pilots we have 5 or 6 pilots multiboxing.

So what problem are we solving by doing this?

Secondly reducing response times. Well i think even @Dracvlad would speak to N+1 not being the best way to balance things. If you give players less time they just bring more catalysts. The problem doesn’t go away it just cost gankers more and that in itself is not balance. How about really thinking out of the box and increasing response times? That might be interesting. It means less n+1 gameplay. Gankers will end up bringing less eventually if they dont need it. There is then more time for counterplay. Anti gankers have a bit more time to get in on the action and do whatever it is they do. One of the recurring things i see from anti gankers is who difficult it can be and i think more time to counterplay (and possibly mechanic changes) would be far more effective than forcing gankers into a “just bring more”

Thirdly killrights. Sure rework them. But I’m coming back to the idea of balance. How is it balanced to provide the location of the pilot? And changing from a month to a year.? Individually those are overpowered but together…….come on. If you are being told exactly where that pilot is at all times why do you need a year to go after them? I completely agree that Killrights need work but they do not need to be over powered. You need to be way more realistic about what you are asking for.

And finally docking rights. So if I’m in Gallente space and have a security status of -5 but my standing with gallente is +3 I still cant dock. You get that standings and security status are very different things and that the empire factions care very little about security status. Based on that I think you need a complete rethink on this because what you are suggesting is incompatible with the systems as they currently are.

So in short. This just isn’t very balanced at all. The proposed changes are just inconvenience that wont really change much and on the face of it appear kinda convincing with lots of text, tables and graphs………but when actually interrogated don’t make that much sense.

Etch_Masuka · June 24, 2022, 10:55am

It’s not that well crafted. the mask slipped often enough for the bias to shine through.

If the op had managed to avoid spilling into all all ganking is “against the morality of gaming” then it would be far more credible.

Jesse_W_James · June 24, 2022, 11:09am

I think a great post @Beatlise

Don’t worry about the negative Karens in the post, they are in all the Crime and Punishment posts saying basically something on repeat.

I am with you on the rebalancing of Suicide Ganks. I think well done and I hope CCP takes notice and at a very minimum helps design a system where the risk vs reward is more balance like everything else in the game, keeps new players growing, and still provides a fun game everyone can enjoy, yes even gankers should have their day.

I wish you the best of luck on this post I hope it gets noticed by the right people.

JJ

Xuixien · June 24, 2022, 11:13am

Remember guys:

Over the years CCP has made various nerfs and rebalances to suicide ganking. Mining barges have more EHP than EVER, with buffed align times overall. Mauraders got huge buffs, especially with bastion being reduced to 30 seconds and fitting microjump drives becoming trivial. Orcas also have more EHP than ever, they gave bumping a pretty big nerf, they added bulkheads to freighters to give them more EHP than any Hi-Sec capable ship.

Remember guys:

It’s never enough. Carebears will continuously complain and demand more and more nerfs. It’s a slippery slope. Mark my words, if carebears had their way you’d all be banned from the game and you wouldn’t even be able to target another player in HiSec.

Aveve_Olerie · June 24, 2022, 12:44pm

In fig.1 you labeled the t2 talos as alpha friendly ship, which is not true. A t1 talos is alpha friendly, but t2 guns require omega. Off to a good start.
You then talk about how cost-efficient the t2 cat is, which is true, but that’s simply how the game works. A t1 cat is a whole lot more cost-efficient btw. But yeah, the game is made so you pay an exponential increase in price for a linear increase in efficiency. A cheap t1 cat is half the dps of a t2, but costs less than a fifth.
Yes, it requires few skills, but lower skills or being alpha reduce the dps you get. Means, a low skill t2 cat can be 25% reduced dps compared to max skills omega, maybe even more. So, using low skill/alpha chars is reducing your isk efficiency.

Yes it is. Because it is optimized for its task, and is held as cheap as possible. So, we need more numbers. If we bring 20 chars to gank your single freighter char, don’t be surprised if we win. If you brought 1 freighter and boxed 20 logi chars, you would win. We simply bring more numbers and optimized fits.

It is possible, but 1. afaik that is frowned upon by CCP. I’m not sure how exactly they handle it, but from what I’ve heard, they don’t like it and you can get the account banned. And 2. most gankers don’t do that, means it’s not actually an issue. Because as I already said, alphas don’t get as much dps, and you can’t even box them. Means, you’re very limited with which targets you can attack, and you can’t even loot them afterwards. This is not how gankers operate, usually.
But I agree, if you could box alphas and constantly recycle them to keep your security status up, that would be an issue.

Always has been. The post you linked was from a ganker who got wrongfully banned by some (I think) GM who either misunderstood the rules or just wanted to hurt gankers. CCP has clarified that what he did wasn’t wrong, and he has been unbanned.
CONCORD pulling has always been legal, as long as you only change the response time from unpulled to pulled. Slowing the response time beyond pulled time is still illegal.

What? Why is ganking harassment? We are not interfering with your playstyle, we are killing you for allowing us to kill you. You make it sound like the existance of ganking makes industry or pve impossible or at least a lot harder, which just isn’t true. Just take precautions to not get ganked and you’re fine.

If you ordered me to do anything I’d laugh it off, and not feel harassed. Who are you to order me? If you somehow threaten me, I’d just take precautions, and I’ll be fine. Something people can do is for example join a corp that will help them. Can recommend.

Right, and to achieve freedom of doing whatever you want to do, we need to take away the freedom for people to gank others. Right. Of course. Because ganking makes it impossible to do pve or industry. Sure.

That’s right, you don’t need them anyways, gankers are -10, means you don’t even need killrights to attack them freely at any time. So, just chase us whenever we undock, we are free to be engaged at any time.

Yes, I see it as decoration of myself, I’m happy to be -10.

I can’t even remember the last time I went shopping on my ganking char. I would literally not care if I couldn’t dock in jita anymore.

Yes, tether is done by stations owned by players that can choose who receives tether and who doesn’t. Stations can be attacked and taken down if you’re good enough. Simple as that.
But back to the NPC station point, it would indeed make sense that you couldn’t dock in them anymore if the owner doesn’t like you. But wait, that’s already the case. If you are in fw, you can’t dock in npc stations belonging to the other faction. Just that gankers are not at bad standing with npc factions, except for concord. So, being able to dock in non-concord stations makes sense.

Gankers are generally omega clones, since we box multiple gankers and scouts. Alpha gankers are very rare. This change would do almost nothing to harm gankers, but prevent actual newbies from doing things like podding people in lowsec, using smartbombs in highsec for pve, trying out ganking etc.
I don’t think that is a good idea, it would prevent newbies from trying certain things.

Just flat out increase gank costs. Again. It would probably indeed reduce the amount of ganks happening, as we have seen with the ehp buff for mining ships. But it won’t stop ganking, it won’t make miners happy, all it does is gankers either quit or simply add more accounts. The outcome of the ehp buff was not all positive for miners, btw. A fair amount of them have complained to us that ore is now worth less, and they make less money. Bots are becoming more common. It’s funny how a buff to miners led to them making less money.
Also, I’m not sure where you get that formula from, because the number for Balle for example is wrong. I’ve tried it, you get the usual 24 seconds, not 29.

As mentioned before, pulling is not a problem but a game mechanic.
And phrasing it like “improving” the ratio is wrong, it makes the risk/reward worse.

Again, -10 status does that and even more, and works 24/7/365.

It’s called locator agents and zkill. You can already do that if you’re not lazy. Don’t see a reason to make it even easier to hunt gankers.

Not sure how I feel about this one. It obviously doesn’t make sense, why would you get a weapons timer without using weapons? But then again, this would indeed be annoying for gankers. We would find our ways to work around it, though.
Also, since your killright doesn’t get used up when activating it, but only when the target dies while under kr, you could give a person an infinite weapons timer like that. And I don’t think this is a good thing. So, make it that kr’s get used upon activation, not upon kill.

That’s already how it works, navy attacks you based on security status.
And I’ve already commented on the idea of denying docking to -10 ppl.

Honestly, that would be interesting indeed. But you need to be very precise with the data, and it doesn’t show you everything. It doesn’t tell you if they quit because they don’t like the game, if they quit because plex price, if they indeed quit because they got ganked etc.
Chances are, getting ganked was just the final nail in the coffin, but they simply didn’t like the game anyways, for example because they didn’t find a corp and just got bored of mining.

That would include gankers who used to be omega but are currently not playing. Also, would include real newbies who wanted to try out ganking and really like it, but are still alpha.

Open zkill. Easy. 99% of the gankers are omega.

I’d like that indeed. But I’m sure that number is rather low.

There’s this thing called monthly economic report. The destruction in highsec is roughly as much as in wh space, slightly less than lowsec, more than abyssal space, and a lot less than nullsec. This does not differenciate between ganks and wardecs, though.
Not sure where you are going with this.

To sum it up, ganking has had so many nerfs over the years, yet you keep asking for just a few more nerfs. Some points are just inefficient in order to actually reduce ganking, some are just wrong, and some just don’t seem necessary. I’d like to mention the ehp buff for barges and exhumers again. It did indeed decrease the amount of ganking happening, but in the end not even the miners were happy with it, as they now make less money. The ones who profit from it are the active gankers, who now get their ganking ships cheaper.
So, either propose to get rid of ganking itself, or accept it the way it is right now. Stop asking for more nerfs.

Aveve_Olerie · June 24, 2022, 12:49pm

This is actually an interesting idea. You would eventually run into an issue as a ganker that we so far don’t have. Heat damage. As it currently is, thermo 3 or 4 is just enough to heat for 24 seconds. If you increased the time in 0.5’s, we would have to train thermo 5 or manage the heat on our guns.
Means, we don’t get free damage, it would actually reward us for having better skills or managing our heat. This would indeed change the risk/reward for ganks, oddly enough.

Interesting idea, as I said. And antigankers would have more time as well, which they would surely apprechiate.

This.

Altara_Zemara · June 24, 2022, 3:37pm

There is not a single day goes by in Eve without something annoying me, or some ‘demotivating’ factor. To me the challenge of being stronger than this is what Eve is all about.

Raylan_Yutani · June 24, 2022, 3:57pm

3-6. Number of players estimated to have lost motivation due to “one more nerf”.

Shipwreck_Jones · June 24, 2022, 4:04pm

Okay, first of all, to all my scumbags out there, you should very much care what happens to ganking. Our heads might be next on the chopping block, but I promise you that these guys won’t stop with us. You WILL be next. They have already been making threads complaining about 1) whaling, 2) gatecamping, 3) suspect baiting, and 4) scamming, and many of the arguments that they’re making about ganking apply equally as well to scamming and other PK activities. Ganking is in a terrible spot right now, and instead of being happy, they’re asking for more. Do you honestly think they’ll be content once ganking is nuked into the ground? Or do you think they’ll turn their attention to other player killers and scammers?

The real reason why they want to lock alpha account safeties to green is to to make it harder for gankers to recruit, and harder for people to try ganking.

Summary

Naturally, some people do honestly believe the BS, but OP accidentally revealed their hand.

Consider this: OP suggested both, 1) that gankers routinely delete their accounts to get around negative sec status and 2) that the consequences of negative sec status is meaningless. But, if negative sec status doesn’t matter, why would gankers constantly be deleting alpha accounts when they could instead get the benefits of omega (i.e. higher DPS, multiboxing, Omega equipment, no SP cap)? Well, they wouldn’t; and they don’t. So why do so many people, including OP, assert that alpha ganking is a problem that needs to be addressed?

To make it harder to recruit new gankers and to get into ganking, that’s why. See, negative sec status and killrights make it a huge pain in the ass to use suicide gank characters for anything else in highsec (even including other forms of HS PvP). Thus, gankers tend to use dedicated ganker alts to get around this. So, with this in mind, do you think that people that want to try out ganking are going to go pick up kill rights on their main PvE’er just to try it out? Or tank the sec status of their wardecker so that Facpo constantly hounds them? Of course not. They’re going to roll a dedicated alpha alt to check it out. Then, they’ll either use the alpha alt to gank casually, or devote an omega toon to being a dedicated ganker.

This is not a proposal to fix ganking, but to nuke it

Summary

Well, OP addressed recruitment, but what about existing gankers? Well, removing tethering will effectively kill multiboxing ganking (and hurt other gankers a lot as well). And reducing concord by 30% will dramatically reduce profitability and engagement profiles for everyone else. Now, that won’t kill ganking outright, but it gets close enough, and allows us to pretend like we’re just trying to fix ganking, and not trying to kill it outright.

Changing the Fundamental Nature of Everyone Versus Everyone Online

Summary

Eve Online was designed from the ground up to be challenging UPvP game, and asking to change the fundamental nature of the game is as absurd as proposing that WoW needs to introduce always on PvP and a full loot death mechanic.

I love Eve Online for what it is. And if you don’t, you should go play something else instead of gambling my favorite MMO on the slim chance that the devs might be able to successfully pivot it towards a more cooperative and casual experience. I mean, best case scenario is that you get a game you love, at the expense of a game I love. What will most like happen, however, is that Eve will actually die because changing the fundamental nature of a game in order to cater to a different audience is an extremely difficult endeavor.

I’m not selfish and entitled for wanting to nuke ganking

Summary

Wanting to nuke an entire play style because you can’t be bothered to learn PvP avoidance and risk management in UPvP game is exceedingly selfish and entitled. But, you don’t want people to realize the truth, because that would make it harder to get what you want. So, instead you frame ganking as cyberbullying, immoral, ruining other people’s ability to have fun, driving newbros away from the game, and/or as ruining the game. And, you certainly don’t let a lack of evidence stand in your way.

Kill Rights are non-functional because people can dock or jump gates

Summary

Holy crap. Someone please explain to this guy how to play Eve, because I can’t even right now. Actuallly… you know what? I changed my mind. Let’s make it harder for people to escape by docking or taking gates. Boom -problem solved. OP will have nothing to complain about

And on a side note, the mere existence of kill rights is one of the biggest reasons why most gankers use dedicated alts. So even when they don’t get used, they do cause negative consequences for gankers.

“Data Extraction”

Summary

Yeah, I don’t actually have any proof backing up my proposal to kill a play style, but I’m going to go ahead and post my proposal anyway, and then ask for CCP to turn over their data to me. Not because I want to get at the truth -oh no. I’ve already made up mind. Instead, I was hoping to find evidence to support the conclusion I’ve already reached. And if I can’t find that, well, I’ll probably just twist what’s there to suit my needs.

One more nerf

Summary

Ganking is already in a bad spot, and they’re still not happy. So why would further nerfs make them happy? They won’t. Even if they manage to kill ganking outright, they’ll just turn their attention anything else that is standing in the way of them optimizing towards boredom and making number go up. Because why expend a modicum of effort towards learning PvP avoidance and risk management in a challenging UPvP game, when you can just convince the devs to nerf your enemies.

How not to be ganker bait

Summary

The real reason why people die to ganks isn’t because ganking balance is in favor of gankers, but because there’s no shortage of players making themselves soft and lucrative targets. Follow best practices, and you can reduce your chances of getting ganked to damn near zero.

Ugh. I could keep going, but this is already a wall of text.

Shipwreck_Jones · June 24, 2022, 4:21pm

Because the proof of the pudding is in the eating. People like pointing to the low skill requirements or isk costs of ships (while failing to account for the fact that they’re single use ships, that ganks can and do fail, that haulers can be lost, that loot drops can be failed to be secured, and the cost of training/plexing dedicated ganking alts), but that doesn’t change the fact that you can effectively negate the risk of ganking by learning PvP avoidance and risk management. Cheese and rice, I mean it’s already trivially easy to opt out of PvP in highsec with a modicum of effort and knowledge. What more do you want? Zero risk with no effort required for your PvE’ers? Because that’s the only place left to go.