I said that off the cuff. But now I ask you all if that’s good or bad?
I agree with many players who believe that having danger in a game like EVE Online is essential. The penalty for making mistakes adds depth and makes the game truly engaging. I’ve always enjoyed playing in hardcore modes, such as in Diablo, because the higher stakes make the experience more rewarding. Similarly, that’s why I initially loved playing EVE.
However, this doesn’t mean that unavoidable deaths are acceptable.
The problem with high-sec ganking, at least in the forms I’m familiar with, is that it’s not a consequence of a mistake on the victim’s part. I argue that high-sec ganking exploits a loophole in the game’s ruleset. It has no real counter, is particularly frustrating because of that, and ultimately led me to quit the game eight years ago.
In null-sec, space can actually feel safer because you know who to trust and who to avoid. When a neutral or red ship enters the system, you can prepare accordingly.
In low-sec, while the risk is high, you understand the reasons for going there and can mitigate dangers with the help of teammates, scouts, and other support.
But in high-sec, you have no such options. You can’t shoot a ship that’s bumping you. You can’t force people camping a gate to leave, even with a group of friends. High-sec ganking creates an inescapable death trap. As soon as you undock, your ship is effectively forfeit unless you adhere to the following equation:
catalyst_cost * (target_ehp / catalyst_total_effective_damage) > target_cargo_value / 2
Using rough estimates: a Catalyst costs about 10 million ISK and delivers around 10,000 total effective Damage before concord intervention. This assumes some allowance for mishaps . Based on these calculations, in high-sec:
- A freighter with 300k EHP should never carry more than 600 million ISK.
- A mission battleship with 100k EHP shouldn’t have a fit worth more than 200 million ISK.
- A Viator with 30k EHP shouldn’t carry more than 60 million ISK.
These constraints are ridiculous and fundamentally unfair. They punish players not for making mistakes, but for simply undocking with anything of value.
I don’t believe there is a lack of viable targets—perhaps 12 billion ISK autopiloting freighters are rarer now…
The only viable solution, in my opinion, is to make looting the wreck of a criminally destroyed ship trigger CONCORD. This would align high-sec mechanics with the rest of the game and close this frustrating loophole.
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Does that include the dst’s I run with avg 1.5 bil cargo up and down the pipes regularly?
No tank on them.
Why? No harm, no fouls on the forums?
I just misread your message.
I agree though that lighter transports do not face the same issue. My viator example especially was a bad one.
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who knows…
what is your opinion?
I merely stated that Hillmar was on the original Dev team that founded this game…
He might have been the one according to one ancient interview that lead the coup to buying out the original CEO and firing him from EvE…might have to look that up to refresh my memory on whom did the leadership coup in CCP.
Would it make a difference in an old game with an outdated core programing that none of the new dev’s can decipher simply because they don’t have grey hair to understand such old tech?
How would they stand a chance to make the game better?
All deaths are avoidable.
Every loss is a result of a mistake on the ‘victim’s’ part. That mistake can be anywhere from buying and fitting the ship, to the choice of system to go to, and to knowing how to mine or haul or whatever safely. Every choice matters.
There are places you can mine where you’ll see not a soul for hours on end. I used to mine the massive belts in Aurcel quite safely. I was there suspect hunting just half an hour ago and there were just 3 people there…all docked up.
Just done 100 jumps and not encountered a single ganker gate camp.
I regularly fly easily gankable expensive ships through Uedama and have never once been ganked there. It’s easy when you know how…the single biggest help being scouting. Flying a gankable ship through a gate without scouting is one the the ‘mistakes’ referred to above.
I lose ships to hubris.
Gosh…my totally unarmed ( apart from 3 puny drones ) 500M ISK Guardian with expensive armor fits yet still only 48K EHP…has often been flown through Uedama on the way to some new HQ. Never been ganked.
I think it is a common noob mistake ( I did it myself ) to fit everything for max possible EHP at the expense of other modules.
My point was new players don’t know their limits and die, quitting the game.
True entitlement is when people place themselves, and others for whom they claim to vicariously speak, in some perpetual ‘victim’ status and completely ignore that EVE gives everyone the exact same opportunities.
People are not born into EVE as victors or victims. They choose whatever path they follow. There’s absolutely nothing that stamps a ‘forever a victim’ stamp on anyone as they join EVE…no matter how much some may whine on the forums as if they’d been cast into eternal torment.
The person bashing that station could just as easily be you. But you chose to be a wildebeest out on the savannah. Don’t blame others, or the game, for your choice. You made it.
I would have to agree with you on that.
Hey, we’ve butted heads, but I am genuinely curious as to your thoughts on this:
As I stated before, some people do enjoy the dark aspect of this game, namely no space is safe, the possibility of being ganked, etc etc,
My guess is that it’s not a huge part of the population. Or at best maybe an outlier.
But what are your thoughts? Not enough to make a difference? Or has a small impact of player retention.
And maybe a second question, age of the game? It feels like it’s becoming dated.
Some are perma victims
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Generally I butt heads when I feel people aren’t contributing to an argument, but rather simply saying “I don’t like your facts and I prefer my opinion over your research”. However nothing personal and always happy to discuss things on the next round.
I’ve been running into this crowd since pre-internet days, back in text MUDs. I’ve never seen a firm “we did a study and gankers (which originally were called PKers) amounts to under 3% of the population”. However it’s always acknowledged to be a quite small group overall.
Ganking/PKing doesn’t refer to PvP in general, it refers to that specific sub-group of PvP who focuses on killing weaker, lower level, unprepared, unsuspecting, or inattentive targets. Some of this we ‘should’ happen, for instance killing the guy running the dozen botted farming accounts on an endless loop.
However when companies are talking about the small minority impacting the large majority, about losing hundreds of thousands of players, about PvP servers being ghost towns, and about splitting PvP out as “doubling the player base”, then it’s clear the net effect of unlimited ganking/PKing style gameplay is a significant player base loss.
As for the possible retention effect, I’d guesstimate it’s probably under 5% of players. Although it might initially attract a higher amount (let’s be extremely generous and say 20% of new incoming players) with a fuzzy concept of “Hey, cool, space pirates and real danger! I bet that’ll be great!”; once those “cool concept” fans check the actual game, they don’t appear to stick around.
Let’s look at a few numbers, some Wardec corps first:
Blackflag. - 214 members (currently), 76,483 kills.
Wrecking Machine - 385 members, 58,341 kills.
Bully Brigade - 51 member, 9,410 kills.
Ganker Corp, War-eligible:
CODE. - 379 members, 410,329 ships killed.
And then Ganker corps, apparently so frightened of actual combat they’re all war NON-eligible:
Safety. - 671 members, 124,918 kills. (in the 4 wars they fought, they killed ONE ship)
Novus Ordo - 590 member, 59,217 kills.
Also if you check background of some of these, they’re actually pretty terrible at ship combat. When they face combat-capable groups, they welp some ships and then run away and dock up. So they’re not even “combat” groups, they’re literally just “turkey shoot” groups.
That’s just half a dozen of the more active groups: 2,000 happy so-called “PvPers” and 738,000 much less happy targets. Keep in mind these aren’t great numbers - membership changes, padding kills, MTU kills etc. But it gives an idea of the scope of the issue.
On average, every happy ganker/wardeccer = dozens to hundreds of unhappy targets. A great many of whom have been documented by dev companies as leaving.
So the question is, if this concept is so attractive and retentive, why so few gankers? Why are PvP servers ghost towns? Why do player bases double if you cut it out? The math just doesn’t add up.
The ideal of course would be to find methods to keep as much of the risk feeling as possible, while educating/setting expectations/retaining as much of the player base as possible. That’s a fine line to walk but it can be done a lot better than CCP/EVE has been doing it.
It’s held up pretty well graphically over the years, I’d say. The base issues of needing so much text information on display, so many really tedious repetitive bot-like tasks (mining, needing to press D-scan every 30 seconds, travelling more than a few gate jumps, etc.), and the 1-second server ticks mean maneuvering and combat all feel like they’re being done by remote control… those all feel pretty dated.
And of course the whole thing about advertising giant space battles, but if you ever end up in one you’ll soon find it the most boring/frustrating experience ever. But that’s the engine, there’s not much CCP can change there without completely re-writing the game.
Some of the ‘aged’ feeling is unavoidable for any 2-decade old game, because everything in the game is a well known, fully documented entity with Google guides and Youtube videos on it. That’s when it becomes even more important to hang on to players as they trickle in, because there’s a tipping point where ‘same old same old’ really loses players (as was happening in 2016, before CCP pulled Alpha state out of the hat).
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removed 11 posts for the below reasons, if there is an issue with a post, use the flag option, meta-commentary on flags is always off-topic.
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Perhaps it’s time for a new war.
Let the pirates pirate more!
Let the scammers scam!
Let the gankers gank more than ever before!
No place is safe and no space is unreachable!
Let havoc be unleashed like never before as if this is the end! ruff ruff
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oh my gooooood would u just get over it
I did fight several wars - and I won.
I wonder Kezrai, how many wars have you won?
And let 90% of loot drop as a result of PvP kills. 
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Could have an entire WEEK called The Purge and let 100% loot drop from all kills. No idea why they haven’t done this already. Every year players could look forward to it. And no space cops for a week so you can do whatever you want.