Remove security status penalty

I’d like to discuss the value of sec status penalties in 2021 Eve or more to the point should they continue to exist, at least for certain activities. Now granted I haven’t thought of every possible consequence of changing how the current system works as it’s very broad. However, at just about the most basic perspective you can have it’s penalising players for PVPing in low-sec.

That in it’s own right might be enough to think, hey, why do we want to put players off engaging in activity? Valid question in my opinion.

However, over the years PVP has changed a lot in other areas of the game. Areas which were previously seen (by some) as more valid places to find content. Null sec PVP has changed. Small gang, roaming and camping has in a large part been replaced by Arena PVP and a greater dependency on diplomacy and timers. There’s very little impromptu PVP or incentive to hunt in small gangs anymore.

Which brings me back to low-sec. What’s the alternative now? The ESSs? Proving grounds? If that’s your thing then great, but it’s not very organic.

What I’d like to see is that penalty removed for low-sec, gate guns could still try to defend those being attacked but let’s not deter people from participating by locking them out of high sec. If null sec is intended to be farmland for block level warfare, which I think it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been treated as, then let low-sec be the home for small groups and solo players. Don’t force people to go well I don’t want to ruin my sec status so I better do something I’m less interested in instead.

Besides, it makes zero sense that Concord are aware of every hostile action you undertake in a low police area anyway

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You can buy your sec status via tags, or roll another character if you wanna be an evil person.

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As someone who lives in low sec I can tell you that I pay very little mind to anyones sec status including my own.

If you are worried well just give your opponents this first shot. The bigger problem in low is that ccp turned it into a farming area for large null blocks with the ore redistribution.

You can still find ‘free’ areas but you’re more likely to run into a group like frat treating a section of low like it’s sov null

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I know that but I’d like to see the need removed. I don’t think it makes sense in the current version of the game.

Why not? You’re still breaking laws in empire space. So long as you aren’t poding people your sec status doesn’t take much of a hit

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You’re breaking laws that the authorities (Concord) often haven’t seen and shouldn’t even be aware of.

From a low security area, they’re aware of every crime you’ve broken and distributed records of it around the entire high security galaxy.

More importantly though is just a gameplay perspective, do you want to penalise players for PVPing in low-sec?

It doesn’t have to mean a long-term criminal record, as I said it could just mean Concord will try and support you if possible when attacked but you’re largely on your own.

I just think the game would be more fun if you didn’t need to worry about long-term consequences of engaging in content. Especially when the alternatives aren’t what they were.

I spent many years as -10 but times change, this idea could boost activity in low-sec and provide a greater choice to players for content. Given how much other things have changed I think CCP can make bold decisions in low-sec too

Or, just roll another character.

I already replied to that suggestion. Do you really like seeing a dependency on playing multiple characters??? It’s not healthy for the game or fun imo

It makes sense, it creates emergent gameplay, it creates balance and income sources. A whole ecosystem exists around the sec status in high and low. Don’t make proposals to dumb down the game!

If you don’t want to bother with sec status in particular you are free to move to nullsec or WH space.

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have you played eve? its been built with the idea of multiple characters to the point that it plays huge rolls in the lore

as for gameplay, yes it does make sense, LS is still supposed to have this added penalty to combat in LS you’re not in null sec yet.

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i have 4 char… two for specifically running SOE arcs, because myself, i cannot run the SOE arc due to all my “crimes” against the filthy gallente.

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I think there should be bonuses in low associated with low sec status.

It’d be cool if outlaw status actually meant something.

Eve hasn’t been built around the idea of multiple characters, it’s been further developed that way in subsequent years. Multiboxing only really started taking off towards the end of the naughties/early 10’s and I don’t blame CCP for wanting as many players to have multiple accounts as possible, it’s good business.

However, from a player point of view creating a dependency on multiple characters isn’t in our best interests. Yes, many players do it, but making the game undesirable to players who wish to have 1 account is short sighted.

If content for small gang players was still like that 2008-2013 period, I wouldn’t have issue with it. There was enough quality content elsewhere for it to be a legitimate choice to specifically target low-sec. Fast forwards to today though and that’s not the case. There’s much less opportunity, especially for organic engagements.

Low-sec only means low security. We’ve seen transformations elsewhere in the game and there’s no reason low-sec criminality mechanics have to work the way it has for ages now. It’s long overdue a shake-up and got nothing to with dumbing anything down. If it would entice more players to low-sec that’s a good thing. If it gives players more choice, that’s got to be a good thing. And while I don’t personally want to see outlaw’s get nerfed like Gix, he’s right that there’s opportunities to do things differently.

Ask yourself in a country with a low capacity police service in real life (underfunded/staffed whatever), what would the consequences be? Would all crimes be attributed to the perpetrator? Would all criminals face justice? Would the details of every criminal and crime be available everywhere they subsequently went?

CONCORD isn’t preventing you from being in hisec with a -10 sec status. That would be Fac Po, to which you can destroy them.

Lowseccer here. I think both of you gentlemen have made excellent points. I do personally feel that the security status penalty does affect low sec negatively, especially in combination with tools like signal and noise filaments which allow travelers to bypass low sec altogether creating a dearth of available content in lowsec.

I personally pay around a minimum of 100m a week to preserve my security status. It’s somewhat frustrating to have to take time to make it so that I can have access to the whole map, or to use my alts to move stuff, which is somewhat of a pain. I personally like the idea of lowsec merely having gate guns, or simply reducing the penalty amounts for combat while still keeping the suspect timer when engaged in unlawful pvp.

I think any idea would require workshopping and testing and I do recognize my obvious bias in this area. I hold all of my opinions loosely with a great deal of humility as I don’t wish to ruin the balance of the game, but I also wish to bring more content to lowsec outside of the limited fights that one can get in FW

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What about the players who enjoy having terrible sec status? What about the people who wear -10 as a badge of honor.

Also also “locked out of highsec” is kind of an extreme description. You can still fly through systems, use stations, etc. Cops are a joke.

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They’d get over it if CCP were actively pursuing something that increased traffic and therefore content for them. You’re never going to please everybody with any update either but I believe in general, low-sec pvpers would welcome this move as well as others who haven’t previously considered low-sec pvp due to little content and the consequences of a bad sec status.

Granted “locked out of highsec” is a slight exaggeration, you can pod about if you’re careful and use station services. But it’s not a massive exaggeration, most activities in high-sec are off limits once you’re an outlaw.

I played well before 2010 and alts were still extremely common. even if it did switch then like you seem to beleive that is still far more than half of eves life where they have been important.

and no eve is not technically designed to push alts. That is simply an artifact of a game that allows alts while pushing co-operation.

As for the rest sec status is not a strong deterrent to anything other than killing pods. It takes an incredibly long time to see any negative effects simply from attacking and killing other players ships. Along with that im not sure why you have this idea that solo and small gangs are dead in null, I have friends who do it all the time and one of our allied corps regularly runs roams through null using filaments. if anything it is easy to do small gang in null than it has been for years. There are only a few regions i would avoid outright.

We’ll agree to disagree on eve not being technically designed to push alts. We can’t prove it either way and I doubt we’d get an honest answer anyway if they had.

Looking at one of my characters it’s taken 4 (non-pod) kills to go from 0 to about -0.5, and I know there’s more variables but it can give a ball park figure of about 12 kills to go from 0 to -2 where most players don’t want to surpass. I don’t call that a long time. Perhaps if you do that’s why we have different expectations regarding levels of content.

I also didn’t say dead in null but I do think opportunities for organic pvp are much worse than they previously were. As Grey Ignis said, filaments have been good and bad. They’ve reduced gate travel which had been the best source of content. They’ve also reduced the willingness of defenders to form as they can’t chase targets down without them filamenting away now. But they’ve not been the only update to change the behaviour of players and at least in their case, there was some upside to roamers.

You asked why I believe that’s the case, experience. I’ve roamed up and down every region of the game and I’ve been doing it a long time. It’s a very, very small number of players that have roamed as far as I have. The changes in mechanics and behaviour are clear to see. But I don’t want to go off at a tangent. This topic isn’t about me, it’s about the impact of security status penalties on low-sec PVP.

how the hell did you math that? if 4 kills got you to -.5 then 12 would only get you to 1.5, not to mention the lower you get the less of a hit you take for each one. Then you have security status of the system to worry about. and being -2 really isn’t an issue at all, you don’t run into a real problem until just before -5

again, living in LS I don’t know anyone who is bothered by the sec status. the vast majority either don’t care or try to get their sec status low as an achievement. You need to spend far less time rating than you do killing ships to repair any lost sec status.