Today, I busted my first gank in Wormhole. I am almost a dedicated explorer and someone tried to jump my Cheetah in a Pacifier. I was hacking a can and he warped onto me at about 5km and web / scram. I hit align, my stab, and ECM burst. Then I warped off while he sat dead in space floating, completely confused. I laughed for a solid 3 minutes.
People say electronic warfare is useless, but it’s a great tactic. The surprise element alone is pretty much all you need for a free warp off!
Edit: I know I’m lame but I hope an explorer reading can get some ideas about how to counterplay besides the dozens of “spam dscan” replies I got when I first wanted to learn how to escape ganks. There’s things you can do !
A lot of times, I will just lock up a target doing a site just to see if he is paying attention while they are hacking; No intention of killing him, as it does go against the Freeport ROE, but just to try and teach a necessary lesson.
Hehe, that’s good!
I love shooting but not killing FW players who I see are using T1 guns, t1 drones, and are obviously alone.
Makes their day, and makes you happy too. The cost? A single 1.5M ISK killmail.
Why is EVE so chock-full of these pretentious, faux-benevolent types? You go around killing, harassing, and abusing newbies with some high-minded “lesson” as though you’re doing them some grandiose favor. As a week old alpha clone I was killed upwards of 10 times by tier 3 ships and at least half the time I had this same type of blustering commentary afterwards. “Oh, ho ho ho! I was just showing you how dangerous it is to be in lowsec without stab and AB in shield tank!” No you weren’t. You were being a dick to amuse yourself and you want to gaslight people into thinking you’re some kind of good guy. Then after they get called out, they start the circular logic loop of “oh you undocked so whatever I do is fair and just” as though something being possible is interchangeable with kindness and justice.
I’ve played probably a dozen PvP games for a hundred hours or so but the number of “Nice Guys” in Eve is completely different than anywhere else I’ve seen. Even the media I’ve seen with people like MacGybo who are straight up killing every ship they see for “using autopilot” in highsec or having cargo, or whatever. He has some smug missive about how they “need to learn” and “this is a lesson” when he abuses alpha clones on welcome programs to blow up ships and scoop their loot. It’s like, the lesson here is that people with thousands of hours in this game are abusing every possible mechanic of the game to the Nth degree with repulsive motive and a big fake smile. All from their grandma’s spare room multiboxing on her ancient computer.
You guys are toxic af and a poison on this game that drives away newbies as they associate with ACTUAL nice people and then get confused when they start bumping into Nice Guys that exploit and abuse their lack of knowledge while posturing to be kind strangers. No wonder this is game is so ridiculously popular on Reddit.
I am sorry if I came across this way.
I try to not just tell new players to get better, but show them how to get better. I try to motivate them and spare them from learning some lessons the hard way.
I have never used the consentual undock argument for killing someone unfairly, because they already know.
I have shown people how far behind they are by killing them, kind of like your “Oh ho ho ho” example, but the way I do it is as follows:
I first get in a convo with them, either after they ask for FW help or I kill them in the warzone.
If I have killed them already, I don’t do it again.
I let them shoot at me for a while with me tanking/maneuvering but not firing back, then if they haven’t died yet, I will ask them if I can shoot them to test their tank, then kill them and then reimburse them significantly more than their loss value (usually rounded to the nearest 5 mil) in order to demonstrate the tank and DPS discrepancies.
Then, I teach them some good fitting strategies, give them a few fits from my library, and give them some dScan practice if they need it.
I try to not be toxic, and I try to only shoot people who genuinely want to be shot at (FW pilots).
I will shoot Ventures, or play station games on the trade hubs if I am bored or mad about something, but I have no justification for that at all. They were in the wrong place, in the wrong time, and got caught due to misunderstanding or lack of vigilance.
And most important of all, I am not trying to be a “good guy”, I am just trying to make a single person’s day a little better.
I feel like if someone dies in a warzone, they don’t have much room for complaining and I don’t really consider that analogous to what I’m describing. My first and foremost point of contention is just the harassment and abuse that is gaslighted as “helping”. Blowing up alpha clone ships with no ally / corps because it can be done with 0 consequences and then trying to twist it into some grand “favor” of teaching Eve. Teaching Eve is difficult and honestly a lot of pilots do go out of their way to try to help newbies. I’ve had a number help me, give me ISK, and try to give me pointers.
But again, I’ve had just as many blow me up for literally no reason then when I’m like “bro what the ■■■■” they say something about how I deserved it for not spamming dscan or existing. It just really sucks for new players, who literally come to the game and get ■■■■ on by veterans with 50M skill points and 1000 hours then get some smug lecture. These same players invariably claim they’re “good guys” and rage about Eve implementing anti-gank or anti-harassment rules while bemoaning the low player count.
For the number of people who claim that they are “good guys” in Eve, there seems to be a bizarre amount of straight-up assholes who drive out new players as soon as they log in. I’ve tried to get a number of my friends to play but they get blown up by a Tengu or a Loki in the first 2 hours and are like “there’s no point, I’m not spending 100 hours getting bullied just so I can function”. It’s hella frustrating to look at the kill mail and see someone just joyriding in lowsec blowing up 2 hour old alphas while I’m over here trying to get RL friends to grow the game.
IDK who or what convinced you that you have some ability to tell people that Eve online isn’t for them based upon a disagreement. But you aren’t unique or different in that way, much of the tiny playerbase seems to think that their participation is some elitist gift to Eve online. Thankfully, I continue to play and advocate for anti-abuse changes that have been implemented while you bleat from the sidelines about what Eve is, isn’t, and how it’s not for the developers or whomever you disagree with now.
This right here seems to be the problem. If someone ever swears at me, IRL or in a game, all bets are off. I certainly won’t help them, and may even “help” them in order to just blow them up again, maybe even repeatedly.
