I suggest that the best course of action is to actually remove the fear of loosing a ship and anxiety of dying by improving the tutorial and training for new players.
Having come back from playing in 2010, the new tutorials are much improved. IMHO the in-your-face Agency interface launcher helps drive new people to learn the game mechanics. However in going through the new player scenarios on startup, I couldn’t help think that having a “You lost your ship but being a clone has it’s advantages, don’t worry, simply grab a new corvette and head back out into space…” as part of the tutorial would address the anxiety I have seen expressed from some new players.
Having a different tutorial branch past “your career awaits” in The Agency Tutorial, or optionally a new “Ship Combat” grouping in addition to the existing “Agents & Missions; Encounters; Exploration; Resource Harvesting” where a “learn what happens in a guided (a.k.a. feels safe to players) way” might also help build awareness and confidence in understanding how the game works.
The existing “Triglavian Invasion” could also help with this if they had a scenario closer to the new player tutorial where they had you watch higher tech ships get destroyed while you are safely observing. But I digress.
But having a tutorial that explains “do not fly what you might loose” is no replacement for always being alert to other players finding new and exciting ways to kill you for any reason they enjoy. Or perhaps “make friends and fleet up to alleviate your fears” is another tutorial that might help - instead of expecting new players to understand that or be reading the forums.
From an Immersion standpoint, you’re right. Gankers have no real consequences. If this was all real in any way, the citizens and politicians would demand serious criminals be banned from game play.
However, it’s a GAME and a variable that makes it interesting, even if it’s doesn’t seem fair. It is fair in terms due to it being a challenge and without a challenge, games are boring.
I play with a trader / hauler as my main and it was a bummer the other night being ganked and losing 2 billion, but it was still interesting in the same way. I now think about the experience as a challenge and how to get around it successfully.
I’ve played the game off and on since 2011, all as a carebear, but would find the game boring if it wasn’t for the little mindless teenage trolls that add the excitement.
Why do you think that gankers are serious criminals? We’re talking about property damage and petty theft here, not murder. And the offender is immediately given financial punishment for their crimes when their ship is destroyed. In fact, if the target of the gank is smart the financial punishment for the crime is more than the value of the destroyed/stolen property.
If this was all real in any way, the citizens and politicians would have a fleet of combat capable ships that responds after every criminal act in their space. If they’re especially brutal, they would destroy the criminal ships without questions asked. Repeated crime would cause those criminals to be chased down whenever they show their face in the area.
I’m amused by someone who been around for less than a year is calling veterans ‘elitist’ when they are telling veterans how the game should be…
Now, in all seriousness, I’m not an avid miner… never have been, never will be. I do have an alpha account that runs a bit of industry to get a little low risk/low reward ISK that I funnel to this character when nothing is going on for this character.
So, I’ve got a hi-sec mining alpha account and I’ve run tons of missions on this account… I’ve never been ganked once. Granted, I’m smart. I came into Eve paranoid… so paranoid I thought a guy giving me free ISK in my first day was scamming me (oh, lol). I don’t fly anywhere near gate camps (check the in-game or dotlan), I don’t mine within 5 jumps of any major trading hub, and if anything appears on a close range D-scan that’s a ship known for ganking, I align. I also set known ganking groups to orange so I can see them in local.
Most of the time, if you get ganked in hi-sec, you did something wrong…
This game thrives on allowing sad pathetic dogs to grief and multibox sweat. When you compare EVE to other AAA MMOs it’s a commercial failure sold to a company that makes a psychologically exploitative pay to win game as that is very similar to EVE. More important to eve than being able to spend $200 and inject a character that would take a year to grind and train is GRIEF. Man, there aren’t many games like this anymore. Whatever’s wrong with these people I cannot imagine because “salt mining” and causing literal grief in people has them emptying their pocket and driving up their online count and character count. You think 40,000 people are online but it’s a small fraction of that. That’s when you realize how tiny this game is, allowed to operate on impulsive mobile phone gaming economics.
EVE will never end the griefing dog gameplay. With so few games for these sad people to play, EVE will always have a core base of trolls and emotionally stunted edgelords willing to spend time and money (real and ISK) just to blow up some newbros Venture.
