Thanks, Scipio, there’s certainly a track record to consider. They may go full-on nerf-bat - only to find it necessary to back-track, with all the extra Dev time that may involve.
I’ve expressed elsewhere my view that it would be useful to address the whole Crimewatch system if they’re going to tinker with ganking, and that would include bounties and killrights. It might be an opportunity for some genuinely ‘roundtable’ discussions, with contributions from notable interested parties and not just CSM members.
But I’m falling here for the trick of telling CCP its job!
I guess I just don’t understand the problem that they need to address. Ganking is fine. It’s a thing people can do. I don’t think that normally ganking and griefing are the same thing and CCP wants to reduce griefing.
They went on to define a few things they generally believe are elements of griefing, but no description of any combination of game defined elements is going to encompass griefing. Griefing is an intent to harm a person behind a computer screen as an objective and whatever a person might do to pursue that objective.
Shooting a player who’s new and has no cargo could be someone trying to cause grief, or (and I think this is more likely) it could be a person shooting spaceships in a spaceship shooty game. I don’t believe CCP can code anything that could reliably tell the difference.
Strictly speaking from my experience, Eve players, and especially PvPers, hate people who go out of their way to inflict real hurt on others. When they find out someone is doing that, the person in question generally gets some in game punishment from the other players who’re ticked off and the problem either resolves itself or it gets CCP’s attention and is resolved that way.
No system of justice is perfect. Some people will do bad things and get away with it. Changes can prevent more griefers from doing what they do, but it comes at the cost of most of the freedom to effect control through military might in Highsec. I don’t think the problem is big enough to be worth that trade off. I already think the options for conflicting in Highsec are too limited and the universe considerably more stale for the extra limitations imposed.
Some people love Aiko, and some people hate Aiko. If that no longer fits the definition of a conflict driver that leads to content generation we should be pleased to have in Eve, then color me disappointed in CCP for wasting a perfectly good opportunity. Well, more disappointed, I guess, but you get the idea.
I am saying the exact opposite. People gank for thrill and profit. neither thrill or profit is to be had in ganking new bros. As I already pointed out, the profit seems to come from new accounts carrying very large amount of isk in very undertanked ships. I have said this over and over again, but one more time, these are not new bros flying shuttles with hundreds of million isk work cargos. These are alts of rich vets who either have been out of high sec for so long they have forgotten about ganking, or are just too lazy to take precautions.
Concerning the thrills, gankers must be bored it they are shooting ventures. The only thrill I see from that is salt. Some people do mine salt. If you get shot in this game, or any game, don’t give people salt. Just say good fight, and then plot your fiendish revenge quietly.
As far as counters to ganking, there are many, as I have outlined over and over. The first counter is tank your ship. The second counter is scout ahead and avoid places where camps are waiting. The third counter is to watch local. If you see Aiko’s crew swarm into local, you need to dock up. The fourth counter is to use your D-scan. If you are feeling risky and don’t want to leave your ore field just because there are suspicious people in local, you need to be pinging that d-scan and be aligned to a bug out location. The fifth counter is to have logi/webber/counter bumper friends on the ready. If I can flying my freighter with high ticket items in high sec to Jita, and feeling nervous, I will have a friend tag along and perform some of these functions. New bros can certainly find a friend with a t1 burst that can perform these tasks with ease. The sixth counter is to not freeze, but put up a fight. If you are in highsec and you can kill one or two gankers you can hold out till concord arrives. The seventh counter is to not be there. If you are in a high traffic spot and frequently (in my opinion even once) being attack, move to a quieter spot.
There are many other specialized counter options, depending on the specifics of the attempted gank. The big advantage that gankers have is they decided if they are going to attack. If you cede all your initiative to the gankers you likely have already lost. take the initiative from them, be aware of what is happening around you, and react to the situation before the gankers are on grid. It is not that hard to do, really it is not. If this seems impossible, watch Blight’s Wretch’s youtube video on starting faction warfare, and try offensive plexing on an alt for a night. After an evening of franticly pinging d-scan while you will get to relax a little, and get better at using the most simple functions of d-scan.
I guess I am going to have to sit down and do a head count, because what you describe is exactly the way it seems to me, only reversed.
As far as EvE have a perceived support of griefing, I agree. EvE supports non-consensual pvp, which in the minds of the majority of gamers = griefing. You are not going to get people that play WoW to move over to EvE without eliminating all PvP except for some kind of controlled “battlegrounds” PvP. PvE mmo players are just not comfortable with non-consensual PvP. If you want to attract PvE players in mass, non-consentual PvP will have to be whittled away bit by bit till there is none.
It seems very counter intuitive to me that most victims of gankers are new bros. Truly new bros don’t have anything worth taking. What I think is often the case, is that the “new bros” are new alts of rich vets, who are being lazy, hence you get shuttles with half a billion isk cargos.
As far as protecting players from early losses, I had heard the opposite to also be true. EvE being a very different mmo that revolves around non-consensual PvP it is important for players to get comfortable with losses. Undoubtedly this is why they added the air mission where people purposefully loose their ship.
New Bros are going to get ganked. They are going to die to gate camps and people are going to probe them down and blow up their venture while they are mining in low sec. To keep this from happening is to keep new bros from learning how to react in these situations.
Is it easier for someone to keep playing after they had the venture that they have all their isk invested in get destroyed, or is it easier for someone to keep playing after they loose the blinged out golem that they have all their isk invested in? I suppose it depends on the person, but it seems to me it is better for the person to learn how to handle getting hunted down and killed while they are flying frigates rather than marauders.
If you keep new bros from learning what to do when people are hunting down their frigates, they are not going to know what to do when people hunt them down latter.
All of your points seem ridiculous to me Lucas, and they seem more designed to keep veterans on Golems safe while they crush lvl 4 missions.
How dare you make this personal just because you disagree with him. His ideas have merit and are worthy of due consideration.
As Lucas explicitly points out, CCP says they are going to start straight up begin removing ganking in its entirety. Completely, 100%, unquestioningly. Despite newbie ganking being the real problem, it instead is really all ganking, and CCP knows this, but can’t explicitly say it, so the blog post is much more credible for giving the unpopular truth. The popular truth stated in Fanfest was just off-the-cuff, to placate the people in the room, so the poor CCP employee didn’t have their life threatened.
Yeah, for sure. Altara, it’s exactly as Lucas says: you’re missing the fact that they’ve already banned all The Griefers for violating the EULA. So why the hell is CCP talking about looking for a solution? Because they have to figure out how to stop the gankers griefers that-haven’t-been-banned-by-the-EULA and won’t be, and instead of banning them under the EULA like all other The Griefers, change the game mechanics to make the gankers griefers suffer from a game that outlives their playstyle.
Yeah you tell 'em! @T_Elliot you’re not ignoring the data that @Scipio_Artelius pulled that shows most gank victims are disproportionately >1 year old or 1-day-old veteran alts. Once you do that, you’ll realize you’re exactly saying “If you’re not new you’re definitely safe” because all the newbies are bearing the brunt of a mechanic that is so overpowered it has teeny weeny destroyers killing ginormous huge battleships.
There are no realistic counters in the game at all, gankers basically have to just click someone’s name in local and their ship is blown up at very little cost. In fact, I hear RMT botting click-farm mechanical Turks just sit in Jita all day at the undock clicking people’s names in local, making all the ships blow up. No counter.
Plus, it is only now, 19 years after Eve’s founding, that ganking is finally ruining the great reputation Eve Online has amongst the gaming community. Completely eliminating ganking is the only 100% surefire way to restore it to its rightful reputation.
I also support Lucas, we should simultaneously remove ganking, and bring back:
Learning Skills.
“Warp To” a stargate drops you off 10km from the gate.
Bookmark limit of 100. Return of Bookmark Cans, and Bookmark Trading.
Clone Upgrades & SP loss upon podding with a teeny weeny pod.
Tech 3 cruiser skill loss.
Reintroduction of POS anchorables, elimination of citadel structures, and re-increase the 1-hour anchor timer for all POS anchorables.
As these were also not adding much of a challenge so it really isn’t that bad, and because ganking isn’t much of a challenge and should be removed under my logic, it also wouldn’t matter to bring these things back, because it really isn’t that bad.
I agree. In fact, it would be great if all stations were basically lobbies, and once you were in a fleet, you and your alts friends just undocked into an instanced arena where you could wander and do PvE content together. For folks without friends, maybe even matchmaking can be introduced!
Yep, the only form of non-consensual PvP in highsec would be eliminated. And consent is very important in this game, we must remain incredibly principled.
Yes, we need the masses to play this game and run rampant. There should be room for people that want to purple-mod abyssal-roll all their items, just as people that strap 2 ORE mining lasers and 3 purple Mining Upgrades in the lows with empty mids and rigs can mine while cooking dinner. These quality of players are what is totally missing from our universe, and would add a dimension of depth and gameplay once they decide in a year or two to finally go to low sec and PvP.
Yeah, true that. An early loss of a 5 million ISK ship is definitely brutal by newbie standards, even if the ship is handed out for free as part of missions, because newbies don’t know that, despite the game railroading them into doing those career missions. At minimum, they should have billions of ISK and only then be able to opt-in into being vulnerable to ganks, at their own discretion. That will ensure people who are taking risks in high sec are only doing so when they feel prepared.
Incredible insight. So many preferences here, when what I am saying is completely objective, truthful, and in no way a reflection of other people’s lack of grip on reality.
Your post is good and has a reasoned discussion about this issue. But you lost me here, (and a few other folks as well) especially when you start talking about Morality in EVE. I read on another post that EVE is a “space themed murder simulator that has PVE and industry to support the murdering.” This is spot on. The fact that you can get killed in a “Dangerous Universe” is part of the game. PK IS a large part of the game, and always has been, heck that’s what makes, what is a godawful boring game of “watch the progress bars”, have real excitement. People are out to kill you while you are doing your thing. That’s THEIR thing and WHY they got into EVE and not SWTOR or something.
But hey, other than that you make some good points w/regard to response times and the analysis of ship types/ gank affordability.
I like the Disallow Red Safety on Alphas (probably the best suggestion I’ve heard) If gankers want to gank (Fine by me)- they can pay for the privilege. At least now they have at least as much skin in the game as the paying customer they are ripping off. and incidentally, taking CCP’s money too. From a Financial Standpoint CCP has nothing to lose with this change and potentially lots to gain. (It will make some folks cry but hey time to pay the piper sooner or later).
Seems completely reasonable to me. Just because we can’t agree on our viewpoint, doesn’t mean we can’t ping GameMasters to come in and settle the debate once and for all, issuing a ruling and proving us correct.
Yeah, @T_Elliot, did you not read, it’s exactly like I said in the previous post: your basing your whole viewpoint without ignoring the data @Scipio_Artelius pulled that showed most gank victims are 1-day-old-veteran-alts and >1 year old pilots. Once you ignore that data, you should start asking yourself:
So then why are so many new players ganked? Why are so many unprofitable ships ganked?
That is doing The Griefing and is a bannable EULA offense and should be removed from the game. But, c’mon, we both know that doesn’t go far enough, it’s exactly like I said in my last post: all of ganking has to go, CCP can’t just outright ban all gankers griefers, and instead has to look for more creative solutions.
If I hadn’t written my own previous post myself and if I hadn’t read it, I might instead just say platitudes like “purposefully farming salt and getting rises out of people and bonus rooms are The Bad”. I like to say things that I know are The Objectively Correct.
Dude, I said this before, there are no counters. Gankers just basically get to click any ship, any name in space, and that ship blows up. There are ways to avoid having your ship blown up, but under the dictionary definitions that doesn’t count as an actual counter:
counter noun
a long flat-topped fitment across which business is conducted in a shop or bank or refreshments are served in a cafeteria.
a small disc used in board games for keeping the score or as a place marker.
Do any of those spaceships look like “a fitment” or “a small disc used in board games”? Get a grip.
I will demand a recount and I want to know the chain of custody. Even if everything is kosher I’m pretty sure you’re making up numbers anyway. I’m 110.314159% certain of it.
Yeah but new players should be able to undock with a ship that’s like 95% of their wealth, and treat it like any other Fortnite kiddie weapon. if they lose it they should easily get it back. Maybe CCP can even sell them their fitted ship back to them. That way they don’t have to replay the game two weeks.
Once they’re a vet flying a 2.5 billion ISK marauder, they probably have 100 billion in the bank so what does it matter, let them skip the 2 weeks of crabbing too and give them their ship back. It’s only 2.5% of their wealth and no one likes it when people crabbing, so skipping the 2 weeks is a win-win.
Don’t forget, no one likes to do repetitive grinding in EvE, especially newbies because they aren’t in love with it yet. Veterans are in love with EvE and will grind repetitively because they love EvE, not because they like the grind nor find it enjoyable. So we have to keep the newbies around until they fall in love with EvE despite hating every moment of playing it, only then will we have high quality players. Otherwise, we risk losing newbies who actually see EvE for what it is and go do something else enjoyable. Don’t worry, I also love this game, and want it to succeed, so much that if it dies, I will be happy.
Most newbies will get killed in a lowsec gatecamp, and those are good guys. Since newbies don’t know much and the lowsec veteran didn’t really gain anything from it, the lowsec pirates will be kind and properly help the newbie.
But hot-damn, if that newbie was attacked by a ganker griefer in High Sec, we all know the kind of people they are! The newbie won’t learn anything and learn it’s a crappy game filled with ganker griefers.
I am above stooping so low as you: i find your points completely reasonable.
Dude, Lucas, I shared the data with you in a direct reply and the post was promptly flagged by the ganker griefer talking heads here. They’ve done it to a lot of my posts. But like I said it’s better to not know about those numbers. It’s like they say in Warhammer 40k: “Knowledge is Power, Hide it Well”.
I hope to know so little and as a consequence become super powerful.
Exactly. It is incredibly hard to actually know who is a new player, esp with alpha accounts LOL.
I think the NPE should be re-designed to only stay within safe noob systems. And new accounts should have a flag. But once you jump into a non-newb system, flag is gone and you ready for real life
So important. Most high sec people don’t understand that reducing the DPS also applies to PvP
True story.
You mean this narrative you keep pushing but never drop the actual proof
Then that’s their fault
Huh. Almost like we should redesign the NPE to help them. Like I suggested
I mean you could also tell them how to avoid the ganks, but for some reason you don’t..
And they are bad at the game. Hence why they cried and CCP buffed BS’s.
Hawk murders marauders on the regular.
I love when you insult your own intelligence just to try and be right
What’s the actual difference? Brand new players get blown up in Spectre Fleet gate camps all the time. What’s the actual difference? Some arbitrary security number? The .4 makes it acceptable and the .5 makes it griefing and the act of a psychopath?
"But otherwise, the only reasonable conclusion appears to be - anyone who claims to know the facts and what the truth is for smaller ships, is talking out their arse ."
It appears that the data are not there to back up anything you are saying on the subject.
You would have any forum reader believe that “solo ganking” new players in hisec is a problem. But let’s clarify this a bit… “Solo ganking” of new players i.e., when there is no profit involved, no valuable drops from cargo or ship, would be considered griefing, at least if we look at the left side of the now famous slide from mr rattati during fanfest. So far ccp is the only party that may have accurate numbers, and hopefully the correct interpretation. And for the rest, there are rules in place enforced by ccp’s support group, to deal with griefing. The official website spends an entire page on the subject, listing all the systems where it is forbidden to gank there as ganking in those systems will be considered griefing.
The other possibility, namely the notion that the usual suicide ganking groups active in hisec would target rookies, where there is no gains to be had but only losses, where there are no data supporting it according to people who actually pulled the data, is either delusional or a sign of ill will towards both rookie and hisec pvp’er. Either way, you don’t have a toe to stand on.
Wrong. The NPE asks for kernite mining as one of the tasks. Kernite is not present in hisec. Had you ever spent a minute in the Rookie Help channel you’d know how often we have to advise them to just buy the stuff on the market.
and handily forgot to quote the relevant part. I see.
Yes, there is one specific COMBAT career mission that spawns more than enough kernite to cover the AIR career track’s demand for it. I’d make the guess that 99.5% of the rookies will fail to notice it. Even veterans fail to notice it, but for different reasons.
It would seem you lost your “cool” ? You should know by now that ad hominems rarely have the effect you seek. I won’t even flag it. I find it hilarious.
Anyway…, your suggestion that there are “other” numbers (that no one bar ccp has ever seen) proving your point of far higher volumes of new players getting ganked, that is the quote I was responding to. Your claims are unfounded and unsupported, and from a game perspective do not even make any sense, as I attempted to explain to you in neutral language.
The latest version of the NPE, which is the combination of career agents and the AIR career tracks, calls for mining 40k units of kernite, and refining them. It also asks rookies to lose (non-corvette) ships, just as it asks rookies to engage in pvp and score genuine kills (I wonder how that makes interpretation of any data set more challenging )
actually that is incorrect… career agents one of them has a mission with at least 2-3 loads of kernite (for a venture).
and again I say to anyone: If you want to know about the Air Rewards Program thing that i think is but was informed is not an exploit send me a mail in game.
as I said in a previous post, there is one mission that is not mining related that has kernite asteroids on grid. There is no career agent mission that calls for kernite, as far as I remember from a month ago. As I have to run them anyway on one of the alts for the juicy 750k sp, I’ll correct my earlier entry if there is one.
I have joined the ranks of the seal clubbers. Which went perfect apart from me shooting the wrong target. D’oh ! I thought Lucas said ganking was easy…
Lol. See the difference between me and you is that I can happily post my losses and cockups and laugh at them. Unlike those who take it all so seriously that the entire universe disappearing in a vacuum fluctuation is waaaaay less serious than some space pixels being ganked.
, Altara!
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