Everyone loves to talk about ganking like it’s some bold, high-stakes gameplay. But here’s a different angle:
Gankers are victims of CCP’s failure to evolve the game.
They’re stuck in a loop:
Fly a cheap suicide ship.
Kill a defenseless target.
Die to CONCORD (as planned).
Repeat forever.
That’s not emergent gameplay. That’s mechanical stagnation.
There’s no meaningful progression, no new gameplay mechanics, and no pressure to adapt or improve. Just recycled killmails in a system that hasn’t meaningfully changed in over a decade.
Meanwhile, the rest of EVE moves on—new ships, new events, new content.
But gankers?
Still pressing F1 in a Catalyst.
Still using the same kill zone.
Still relying on the same predictable mechanics.
CCP never gave them tools to grow into actual pirates—no turf control, no smuggling, no bounty hunting, no reactive AI response, no player retaliation incentives.
So what do they do?
They run the script. Because that’s all the system allows.
And the cost?
Targets quit.
Gankers burn out.
The sandbox shrinks.
If CCP wants to revitalize highsec and PvP, it’s not about removing ganking. It’s about giving it real depth.
Let ganking evolve into piracy.
Let players rise, fall, and fight over something that matters.
“Actual” piracy would be a breath of fresh air, but I have to wonder if the ganking community would embrace bonafide piracy/looting in lieu of giving up those juicy killmails for ganking.
What is bonafide piracy - why is destroying a ship the only option for pirating? If we had weapons (or at least ammunition) that could disable a ship and render it apt for plundering (generating a suspect flag) - wouldn’t that be an interesting twist?
Disable transports outside ports and attempt to plunder them before any white knights intervene… disable miners in a belt and steal ore from their holds… disable combat vessels and steal ammunition and loot after you knock them out.
If you believe that this is the only thing that gankers do, then you don’t know anything.
This is just end phase of a sometimes very long chase or search.
It is also missing CONCORD spawning and pulling. (The most annoying mechanic in EVE that only gankers suffers with,) And looting and getting away with the loot.
They won’t get a killmail for it, that’s why they won’t go for that. Their sensitive egos are tied to those killmails for existence. No killmails — no feelings of superiority and they’ll just fall apart and see they’re made of the same stuff those miners are.
But having said that, it’s probably not all that viable an option in terms of game play, since when you kill a ship you will already get some of their cargo/fit anyway (and during some events you get 100% loot).
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