Noticed I got linked to in this thread. Here’s a comprehensive list of direct and indirect Piracy/PvP changes CCP has implemented over the years that I have saved. I updated it with a few entries of the latest changes CCP has made over the past year or two:
Direct non-consensual PvP nerfs
- CONCORD being made invulnerable, given firepower/e-war boosts, and being made a kill trigger instead of a functional NPC (“Yulai Incident”)
- Wars increased in cost by 25x during the “Privateers” era
- Multiple additional CONCORD buffs to damage, e-war, and response time (I could make a line for each one, but I’m too lazy to find the individual patch notes)
- Mining barge EHP boosted significantly, and fitting options improved:
- Buffed across the board in 2009/2010 due to emergence of barge ganking
- Buffed across the board in 2012, when they were put in their defensive “tiers”
- Covetors/Hulks given extra low slots in 2016 due to miner complaints about not being able to maximize yields because they “had to” use Procurers/Skiffs to avoid being ganked
- Barge EHP was effectively doubled 2021, except for the tanky versions, which went kind of plus/minus depending on fit because they already had battleship-tier EHP
- Removal of fleet warfare aggro transfer (“Lofty scam”)
- GM ruling that the MWD/cloak warp “trick” is not an exploit after a long series of community debates
- Multiple increases to criminal act security status penalties (you used to need to pod multiple people just to get to -2.0, and now all you need is one final blow on a ship)
- Officially making it legal to repeatedly roll corporations to avoid wars, after disallowing it for many years
- Removal of insurance payouts for ship losses in which CONCORD is involved
- War costs becoming a function of amount of members the target has (so that a small corporation declaring war against a large one would pay orders of magnitude more than a large corporation declaring war against a small one - utterly asinine and fortunately reversed a few years later)
- Introduction of the war ally system, which costs much less than declaring war does (acts as an uneven restricting mechanism against small wardec groups since large hub camper groups join as allies for free just to have more targets - this has contributed to killing off most small-scale high-sec mercenary work)
- Introduction of the “safety” button, which made it impossible to trick someone into shooting you by employing social engineering
- Introduction of Crimewatch, with the following primary components:
- Suspect timers instead of being flagged to owning corporation only for theft of assets in space
- Kill rights awarded for criminal actions, even if unsuccessful (bad mechanic, as they make the target a suspect, as opposed to facilitating targeted bounty-hunting)
- Corporate friendly fire toggle (eliminated assassinations in high-sec space)
- Removal of hyper-dunking (being able to board ships while under the global criminal countdown)
- Removal of all legal neutral assistance (made many forms of baiting impossible)
- Nerf to bumping mechanics (limited to 3 minutes instead of being possible indefinitely)
- Removal of watchlist login status tracking (generally more useful to attackers)
- Blockade runners gaining immunity to cargo scans
- Addition of specific rigs/gear that are aimed at increasing hauler/freighter resilience
- Instantly being unable to warp after a crime, instead of after CONCORD’s arrival (“boomeranging”)
- Removal of hyperdunking (boarding ships while criminally-flagged)
- Disallowing wars unless targets own assets in space (cut war eligibility by over 90%)
- Requiring war declarers to own war HQs (forced the creation of a single, invulnerable war cartel and the extinction of the concept of small mercenary corporations)
- Removal of bounties (allegedly due to performance issues, but no alternative system has thus far been provided or even discussed)
- PvE content offloaded from belts into anomalies and signatures (more time to escape)
- Special PvE sites that can only be entered by one player at a time and/or requiring specific ships
- Mobile Observatories in null-sec (eliminate the “AFK” cloaking threat)
Indirect non-consensual PvP nerfs
- Damage Control hull resists partially integrated into base hull resists in 2016
- Battleship EHP mod bonuses (e.g. 1600mm plates)
- Various slot changes and random +HP additions to individual hulls (especially faction/navy variants); everything on average has become about 2-3x more survivable since the game’s early years
Direct non-consensual PvP buffs
- War transfer mechanics making the “Dec Shield” impossible to work, because corporations could shed their wars repeatedly with one click (this was basically a bug fix and not a new feature addition)
- Tags-for-sec mechanic (balanced by relatively prohibitive costs)
- GM ruling that “pulling CONCORD” is not an exploit after a long series of community debates
- Addition of PvE sites that make you suspect-flagged upon entry or exit
Indirect non-consensual PvP buffs
- Removal of clone costs
- Removal of Destroyer RoF penalties
- New ship additions, some having piracy-friendly stats (e.g. Tornado for ganking)
- Surgical Strike update in 2021
- Added 15% damage bonus to short-range Tech II ammo for short-range weapons
- Reduction of resistance module stats across the board (partially reversed later)