Solution to reduce highsec ganking

Council Of Stellar Management Assembly Hall
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105

If I had to guess, I’d say 500-1000x more players multi-box mining fleets than ganking fleets. It’s all well and good to decide that multiboxing is an issue with player “enjoyment” of the game, but I kinda think it is the economy-bending effect of massively multi-boxed mining fleets, or industrial alts, that you should be concerned about rather than a few dudes multi-boxing ganking ships.

It’s easy to avoid being ganked by a fleet, even more-so by someone who is trying to control a dozen game clients. There is essentially nothing you can reasonable do stop a dozen AFK Orcas from spewing minerals into our shared economy, or a dozen industry characters running parallel refining jobs docking in a station.

I mean, I’m fine with rebalancing suicide ganking so it is harder to multibox, and can be done again by a reasonably sized fleets, but of all the things CCP should tackle, it is the least important downside of easy multi-boxing in terms of effect on the game and player “enjoyment”.

106

I’m concerned about every kind of multiboxing (and not only in EvE btw), and I’m far from being an anti-gank person.

Actually you might have seen me write several times that I believe that industrial gameplay should take a huge slap in the face, because we have too much of everything easily available IMO.

107

God, you guys crack me up with this risk/reward bovine scatology. If there was any risk these dweebs wouldn’t do it. The entire point of shooting things that don’t shoot back…but wait.

They know this. They get us engaged in these endless arguments 'cause as long as we’re “debating” the “issue” nothing is being done about it. They can crow, “It’s under dispute!” and pretend to be in possession of some subtle philosophical truth.

The issue isn’t with these witless wonders who can look at something as dynamic as EVE and all they can think to do is this one-dimensional petty activity. No, the issue is with the allegedly intelligent people who see it, and could remedy it so easily, but who instead just turn their backs. That is as intelligent as ganking is “risky.”

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108

How does your mind work?

You equate guaranteed ship loss with zero risk. Then you place the semi-conscious maybe-AFK highsec hauler on a pedestal.

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109

But Concord shoot back for them and is more effecient at it than any player would ever be.

Don’t try to sell yourself as an intelligent player when you start your salty “reasonning” with such BS.

Oh, and also:

That’s just an other non-sense. Gankers never start those arguments, it’s always people like you who start them. And they start them again and again in the hope that if they spam enough, CCP will start to believe that a non-problematic gameplay is actually a problem. This thread is no exception, just look at who created it and what is the content of the first post.

Once again, don’t try to sell yourself as an intelligent person. Dude you are not even clever enough to understand who is starting what and for what reason.

110

If you SCAN a ship to make sure it has X+ ISK in loot, calculating the ship replacement cost (from a PLANNED suicide gank) and you don’t attack unless the numbers show a cetain PROFIT (meaning no LOSS), there is NO RISK. The ship loss is just part of the cost of doing business. No loss? No risk.

There. You made me TYPE IT OUT for you. The question is: Knowing all this, why do gankers need to persist in the false claim that they risk something? If one only does no risk activity, one is RISK AVERSE.

Of course, gankers already know this and prefer to occupy us with their WHINING, and fictitious sob story. Point this out and you have to explain yourself to THEM? LOL. Not on your life.

111

If you have the time to scan the ship and determine that it has enough total value that 50% random drops will ensure you break even or make money - the target has time to GTFO.

112

Which is just, in psych terms, rationalization. And, an attempt to introduce a red herring. Be advised. I’m not trying to convice gankers of anything. This endless font of rationalization is testament to a certain intellectual dishonesty.

Throwing this pasta at my wall to see if it sticks is a waste of gankers valuable time. You can’t be strokin’ your epeen and bullshitting me at the same time. Log in and find a helpless noob to beat up and rob.

113

The loot drop is random. If you want to see risk - then look there. There is also a significant risk that somebody else will snatch the loot. There are plenty of examples where virtually 100% of the loot exploded, in spite of the supposed 50% loot fairy.

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114

It’s probably best to just ignore Ms. Repose there. Of course ganking is easy, risk-free ISK if you ignore all the risks, costs and opportunity costs. Even then, with all the risk and cost ignored, it still has about the same risk as most Eve PvE where the amount you mine, or the loot tables you are rolling against, are known and your profit predictable. No one rages like she does about how mining is too “risk-free” or PvE is too easy because you always make a profit.

It’s kinda telling that in a game where players min/max every aspect of it into the ground, and exploit to the point of unprofitability any opportunity to make ISK, that only a few dozen people choose suicide ganking as a profession. It’s because it isn’t especially reliable or lucrative, at least compared to the actually easy and risk-free PvE options that have been solved and are available to players.

Gankers almost never have the level of control people seem to think they do. They don’t have perfect knowledge, they are surrounded by other players on grid who can interact with them, and they have to contend with chance-based mechanics that make any calculation of profit at best a probabilistic one. Sure, the best pirates massage these factors to be in their favour, but even that isn’t easy or effortless. Certainly not as easy as most PvE activities people choose to do to make ISK.

But I am wasting my breath here. People’s view of suicide ganking is more influenced by their personal psychology and history than the facts. That’s fine, but it also means threads like this will pop up with regularity until the servers go dark.

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115

More bovine scatology. I usually ignore those who are fertilizing the forum - like you.

116

I’m pretty new to the game (tried out the game a few years ago and now am back, hopefully for good) but I’m interested in the topic because I’ve had other players in other games quote high sec ganking as a reason for not playing eve or quitting after trying it out (despite what I’ve read about the statistics not supporting this, which I’m kind of confused about - maybe they were just bad eggs and I’m wasting way too much time thinking on this). For reference, I’ve never been ganked in high sec nor have I ganked anyone else, so my opinion is based on limited experience (i.e. I’ve seen people get ganked and read second hand stories). I am totally open to counter arguments from the more experienced.

My opinion on it, is that the scales are unfairly tipped in gankers favour because of their first strike opportunity. I do think high sec ganking should a) be a possible but difficult game mechanic (and here I do realise I’m woefully ill informed on how difficult or risky it is - I have tried to educate myself on the topic though) and b) be accessible to a new player much like other careers in eve but at some reduced income potential similar to other careers available to new players.

But the fact that you can’t aggress first as a target of a gank is a bit unfair considering gankers can - though I totally understand that the obvious solutions for this problem affect way too much.

The suggestion I thought up is having concord “seize” your weaponry as a requirement to being in high sec space. I think that’s reasonable considering players have access to say, market board while in space, so I assume lore wise there is some inter space connectivity going on.

So when a ganker attempts to fire unlawfully on another player with drones or anything that can apply damage (not EWAR or tackle or whatever), concord locks this action and say, it opens a hacking mini game (against concord) or a timer based on hacking skill for instance, that won’t apply damage to that ship until the hack is beaten. Then perhaps you could have a high SP requirement skill that allows you to perform this hack undetected by concord BEFORE a gank attempt, for older more specialized ganking characters. So you would go pirate from the moment you attempted to aggress, but you can’t actually apply any damage for some window of time unless you are skilled into it. Or maybe even certain weaponry that can bypass the concord lock which is either expensive or has a high SP requirement. That way, the current security rating bump would have more effect because people would have a significant impetus to use more skilled characters instead of throw away or low skill investment characters.

In turn, concord response would need a nerf, I believe, from what I understand of the current system. Maybe even ehp nerfs for haulers.

Though I still don’t think ganking should be reduced necessarily, which is what the title of this post is. I just feel it needs some attention. Flesh it out a bit more as a game mechanic.

How would a solution like this affect high sec gankers? Or even haulers? Totally stupid? Unfeasible? Not adding fun and enjoyment to either party?

117

This type of thinking doesn’t work. CCP has been going down this path, with shorter timers and more extreme penalties - all they have succeeded in doing is breeding more efficient killers. In the old days, mining barges and industrials were weak and easily killed. The gankers were mostly disorganized bands of yahoos that fleeted up a few times a year and made a bunch of explosions. Nobody took it seriously because it was ridiculously easy and took no skill.

So, CCP has added buff after buff, they have added roaming police forces that can find any safe spot instantly and destroy anybody with negative security status anywhere they go. They have even added features that make it very difficult to form an effective fleet with other players.

Instead of weakening ganking, they have thinned the herd to the point that the only gankers that are left are very specialized players that can swoop in and destroy your ship in 5 seconds. These were design changes made by CCP to balance ganking, yet the end result is that the ganks that happen now are nearly uncounterable.

Of course, nobody can conceive of this, so they just keep asking for more concessions to make ganking harder. It will not work. The gankers will just learn to work faster and work around any obstacle CCP can invent.

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118

My suggestion wasn’t really to make ganking more difficult though. I think concord response times and the ships that turn up to kill gankers should actually be nerfed. Maybe back to what people used to say where you could escape concord if you were fast/smart enough. Chased by concord into low or null or something. Sounds like more engaging NPC behaviour to me than 1-shots.

I was more proposing the mechanics be changed to turn it into a more fleshed out event. Because the issue a person I was talking to that… I can’t quite remember if he was ganked and stopped playing or heard of it happening and decided eve wasn’t for them, brought up the feeling of injustice. I think it’s that “nearly uncounterable” you referred to. At least by adding some sort of timer to overcome if you are a low SP character, your ganking effectiveness is limited but not impossible, and if you are skilled, you should only be going for high value targets because by that time your isk/gank attempt should have higher expectations. So that would result in newer low SP gankers targetting similarly low SP say, miners, and higher skilled gankers targetting high value haulers or orcas and such. No?

Mind you I don’t think a lot of things in EVE are “fair” or “conditioned” and that’s part of the magic. I just think the singular point of gankers being able to shoot first is an advantage tilted in their favour by nature of coding/game design. Say for instance if I’m in null, someone drops on me, I can shoot first ask questions later, but if a fleet drops on me I’m wrecked anyway - not “fair” but fair in EVE. But ganking in high sec is sort of… Well I can’t aggressively protect my belongings because its hi sec, and I will be penalised if I’m too liberal with my response to being yellow boxed. Even if I fly with a full fleet of protection, technically I can still get primed and all my buddies can’t do anything about it before people actually start applying damage - by which point, its probably too late anyway. It does appear one sided in that sense.

If ganking has turned into something that isn’t accessible to a new player, I think it’s a little bit of a shame though. While its personally not my cup of tea, having some introductory tasters to all sorts of content is important imo.

119

More than half of the gankers you run into have -10.0 security status. You are free to shoot them as soon as they appear. Even if they don’t, you will get a kill right on them and you can hunt them down later (after Concord kills them).

120

Oh wow. Sorry, I wasn’t aware of that. I was labouring under the assunption it was quite common for people with higher sec status to gank. So if they have such a low security status, how is it that they are able to pull these manoeuvres? Actually you only need to answer that if you want, I can go research a little more into it. I obviously missed something along the line

121

The tornado pilots that camp Jita and some of the busy star gates maintain their security status near zero so that they can just stay put and wait. The guys that gank miners mostly use scouts to find their targets and keep their -10.0 ganker either docked or tethered.

The saying goes that you are either docked up, warping, or ganking. With negative security status you cannot do anything else in highsec.

122

Concord instantly destroys aggression in hi sec - as they should.

What the F is the issue?

Otherwise, what the hell are we paying taxes for?..

In real life the police are pretty much the cleanup crew; while we pay taxes to keep 'em around.

In virtual life - where we also pay tax - the police can/should/will appear instantly.

If I want to play risky - and pay no tax - I’ll play in low or null.

Hi sec aggression should be destroyed instantly.

Otherwise give us back our taxes…

123

This is false. There is a delay in the arrival of CONCORD that scales with the sec level of the system; however, even in 1.0 systems it is not difficult to execute of suicide gank. This is why - to some - suicide ganking is such a concern, because not only does CONCORD take time to arrive, but even when they arrive promptly it is only after the suicide gank has already succeeded. That is, they arrive AFTER the shots are fired, not before.

124

Players should not be allowed to interact with each other in a non-consentual way.

This is the premise, yes?