Coming back from a couple of years off, I am noticing a difference in ‘hunger’ whilst attempting to eke some ore from Losec.
In past years, pilots would pass through Losec and occasionally hunt you if they were in the mood. Also, not EVERYONE was interested in killing anything that D-scan implied was less combat-ready then their ship.
Now, it seems that players will see a Vent or Pioneer on D-Scan and they will not move from that system for… hours. I noticed the same in W-Space, players chasing me through Hole after Hole, up to four in sequence - I even commented in Local “That’s a lot of trouble for an empty venture.” (No response ofc)
This isn’t a whinge, Eve is Eve, but I can’t help feeling that having a Cloaky TIII inevitably turn up after three mining cycles and just sit in the system until you expose yourself or leave in frustration is not a healthy distribution of gameplay. I mean, I don’t mind losing ships and the cat and mouse aspect is exciting and attractive, but it seems to be at a point where one must ask oneself “what’s the point in even trying?” - An argument could be “Don’t fight 'em, join 'em” but something deep inside me is revolted by the idea of dropping TII/TIII combat ships on unarmed industrialists or explorers - once or twice, sure, but making it your focus in eve seems lazy, I mean where’s the risk vs reward everyone hails as part of the equation?
Anyhoo - I reiterate, this is an observation, not a whinge, we move on and adapt, but I would be interested to hear others’ philosophical takes on this phenomenon, if they have noticed the shift in player dedication.
For you? You get expensive ore, gas, other resources because the campers prevent massive mining and create a market price raising shortage, which gives you more reward for being active in a dangerous area of space.
For them? They control the market (to an extent) and get more expensive kills because of the high resource prices. They also get to earn more themselves because of the high resource value, and they attract wannabe harvesters, which creates a reliable, predictable player killing stream.
Whenever the camping ends and harvesting these resources becomes easier, prices crater and engaging in this activity becomes less reasonable and engaging.
That’s my point - You just don’t get expensive Ores or Gas. There needs to be a ‘chance’ of harvesting more than a couple of Million isk’s worth - it needs to be difficult, frustrating, dangerous and satisfying if you pull it off, but from my recent experience, and I hate this metric, the isk per hour is far lower than mining Hisec anomalies or practically any other activity with little risk. That means that there is nobody even trying and those that do have the balls to are seen as a ‘reliable player killing stream’. We do want people dying in Losec whilst attempting to harvest better Ores, but we do not want it to be prohibitably policed to the point of being near-impossible - compare exploration with mining, for example - One makes bank, the other, constantly interrupted, loses ships and brings back maybe ten million isk on a good day.
Economics aside, the thrust of my post was regarding player sensibilities, rather than the necessities of maintaining market stability. Harking back to 2007 when I started, you could mine in Losec - Sure, I lost ships, but I also brought back some Ore. In the last 2 months, I’ve brought back maybe one full hold of ore, despite trying a couple of times a week. the game mechanics haven’t changed, the players have.
Sure you do. WH gas or LS gas is by far more valuable then 95% of whatever you can mine in HS.
Yeah thats because you are probably doing it wrong. Even in a totally cheap and not skill-intensive Venture, you should gather multiple holds per day, resulting getting 10x more value than the venture is worth. Which is a pretty nice “return of invest”, even if the ISK/hour is far from what is possible in EVE. But on the other hand you pretty much risk nothing when going around in a Venture.
Ah, okay. I think we’re talking at cross purposes. I proposed a philosophical observation regarding changing player focus, you’re implying that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Usual eve forum ‘git gud’ conversation.
Thanks for your contribution - maybe there are some Industrialists out there in the Industrialist forum that might want to add their input.
Well, I played in Lowsec for more than a decade and then in WH space for more than a decade, with occasional Lowsec trips. Player behaviour hasn’t changed in terms of “we try to kill anything that we can catch”. It was that way nearly 20 years ago and it is the way today. What has changed is the tools, you have a lot more high-end concepts available right now to create camps or traps that are nearly 100% deadly.
And tbh, I don’t care if you “git gud” or not. I was just pointing out that your claim that the risk-vs-reward correllation is missing is simply not true. Rewards are higher in LS or WHs, objectively. It’s a provable fact, not an opinion. That you can’t reach the possible performance is based on the way you approach the content, most likely. That isn’t a judgement, it’s an analysis.
If you want to know what you could improve, I am more than willing to help. If you want to be mad just for me pointing out that your strategies aren’t very effective which might be the reason for you believing that risk-vs-reward seems to be off balance ins LS/WHs, feel free. But just out of experience, I’d imagine that someone who didn’t play for years is best advised to listen to those who did have instead of refusing advice over hurt feelings. But at last, the decision is entirely yours, you can decide to go back to HS instead if you think thats more lucrative, you can keep trying to mine in LS/WHs very inefficiently, you can try to improve all on your own… it’s a free game and whatever floats your boat will work out, one way or the other. Enjoy.
I must say that not being killed seems to be 9/10ths of operating in ‘Dangerous space’ and at this point the Pochven express loop is way more productive than dealing with the obsessive personalities that I have encountered recently in Losec. I should really concentrate on applying to areas that are less frustrating instead of banging my head against what I think Losec should be.
As an aside, I haven’t run into one single gatecamp yet (obvs avoiding the famous systems). Maybe the new map has made that tactic less desirable and spread the PvP playerbase wider - changed their behaviour?
The current Military Campaigns event has a lot of objectives that need to be done in low sec, some are faction warfare related but others are just mining and exploration objectives. That might be causing some change in behaviour, perhaps more people venturing into low sec that normally wouldn’t, and hunters following them.
The other thing with the Military Campaigns, and to a lesser extent the reintroduction of Isogen-bearing ores into high sec, is that the value of mining these new ores has roughly doubled what a miner can earn mining in high sec compared to the standard high sec ores, while there has been no increase in the value of low sec mining in that period. So although low sec mining is still more profitable overall, the risk/reward balance has shifted a bit in favour of high sec mining I think.
I haven’t noticed any wide change in player behavior.
Some players/groups will have different philosophies towards interlopers. I know that in Aridia, if you’re caught huffing gas or running sites in low sec, the local Russians will hunt you down mercilessly, jumping system to system until you die or disappear.
However, you can park your venture in a hot FW system like Turnur, and go unharassed as the locals are seeking glory and big kills. (in fact Turnur is one of my fav systems just to run scout and small FW plexes as you won’t be attacked lol, even if there’s 100+ people in local).
It is intrinsic in Eve that player behaviour will change as people adapt to the shifting landscape. As Kaivarien stated, FW systems seem to reflect the more random, ocasionally indifferent response to interlopers, as opposed to the more nullsec-like territorialism exhbited in Aridia. That is good - regional differences.
My own observations may indeed be regional - certainly, pro TIII gankers are a lot rarer in the systems where there is a significant chance of running into competent PvPers that would love to add a Tengu to their ZKillboard.
Searching for a generally more quiet or different space was already discussed.
But you could get yourself also more ninja…like just relocating a few jumps if you have company or playing the logout waiting game. Or the cloaked waiting game.
Or you can combine it all and just relog to another character in a different region and system that also sits in a venture and currently has no company and just continue mining there.