I've read yet another "oh noes, gankers are nerfed" post. Then a post that celebrates an FPS for being "more sandbox" than EVE. It seems the players of the "niche MMO" want more blood for "no other end than ‘having some lolz’ at the expense of those who haven’t a clue". The actual safety of highsec surprised me much, I never lost a ship despite people had every reason to gank me. Both the 10B cargos and the "emergent gameplay" aka out of game hate.
The other thing I was surprised is Jester saying (down in comments) "once a week or so, I jump-clone one of my mains to Empire to handle PvE so I have ISK for PvP. For those 24 hours, that main doesn't have access to 0.0 at all." Now Jester is one of the top PvP-ers of this game. He was flying in alliance tournament in a team that got into top 10. Why on Earth does he go to highsec for PvE? He could surely defend himself while doing PvE in his home system.
There were a series of my own finds: local channel helps PvP-ers, insurance helps PvP-ers and the largest nullsec alliances are as rich as a half dozen players.
Finally there was faction war. It was practically won by Minmatar and Caldari. Amarr and Gallente are non-existent, Minmatar and Caldari cross-plex to each other to farm LP. People claimed to come for good fights, but FW turned into an AFK-orbiting, multibox-bomber-missioning mutual carebearing field.
Combine these together and you get something much-much nastier than my older "EVE is more casual-friendly than WoW" post. There I just claimed that the main income of CCP comes from "highsec carebears" and they are protected from the PvP-ers by the highsec rules. PvP-ers are given their separate playground and motivated not to mess with carebears. They are catered either for historic reasons (EVE was started as a PvP game) or because of PR.
The truth is much-much darker than that. The highsec rules are created exactly to protect the "griefers" from the "carebears". The further discussion needs definition of 3 groups:
Let me explain: Jester jumps to highsec to do PvE because its convenient. He doesn't have to dscan, he doesn't have to dock and reship to PvP, he doesn't have to watch local. In short, he could do his PvE without having to care about the random griefer. He surely doesn't afraid of him, he simply don't want to waste his time with him. I remember how annoyed I was back in WoW, Tol Barad when we did quests for "standing". Every now and then a griefer jumped on us, died but wasted 10-30 seconds of our lives. In WoW if you crushed him, he lolled, respawned and came back. In EVE after a few rounds he'd be out of money. Still my time would be wasted by that punk so I'd rather avoid him if possible. So does Jester. Most players claim that "80% of players are in highsec" is not true, 80% of the characters is. They say that they are low/null PvP-ers who PvE on alts. The goal oriented players avoid the harassment of griefers and do PvE half-AFK. If they couldn't do that, they'd do as they can: by forming blobs, protected PvE ops and so on. That would be pretty much the end of the lolroams.
What about the carebears? They would be an asset because they could be offered protection: "mine in our space, we protect you for half the ore". If you created the gatecamp, the more miners inside, the more ore/hour for you. It's PvE players who need the land, so they'd be motivated to seek protection from PvP-ers, just like the peaceful citizens are paying tax for cops and soldiers. Now the Concord provides it for free, so the PvP-ers are uncompetitive in selling protection. Concord also allow high density of players, neutrals can mine in the same belt in highsec or rat the same complex. This allows the PvP zones to be deserted enough that a roamer can avoid enemy "blops". Since there are 40K players online and about 7K star system, in every system there would be 6 players on average if they had to spread out evenly in lack of highsec.
The existence of highsec motivates goal-oriented PvP-ers to not defend themselves or the carebears from griefers, just move to highsec for PvE. Highsec feeds us all, why bother fighting with lolkids? Since the low/null land is unpatrolled, lolkids can run amok there, killing an odd bot, lost newbie or dumb ratter. They consider themselves kings of the hill while actually they are just like youth gangs fighting for crappy zones in the ghetto. They are poor, they are despised and avoided but no one is really motivated to kick their butt because no one wants their turf. The middle and upper class people are happy in their "highsec" of the good neighborhoods, they can't care less what's going on the ghetto. Remove the highsec, force people to mix and you'll get exactly what happens when a formerly busted neighborhood becomes financially interesting (because of a new highway or stadium or something): the rich, goal-oriented people evict the gangs that "owned" that land in matter of days.
I think EVE is designed exactly in a way to demotivate good players to get into conflicts with "ima pwnzor" lolkids, allowing the latter to exist. Just like with local channel, the lolkids believe that it protects the carebears from them, boosting their ego "if concord wouldn't be there, I'd own you all". The truth is the opposite: it protects them from anyone having a reason to fight them. I really hope that their wishes came true. I would gladly approve to a change that removes Concord from highsec, leaving only faction police and gateguns.
By the way this insight explains why goal oriented PvP-ers don't like carebears: carebears are nothing to them but competition when they do PvE. Their ore is cheap because the carebears mine a lot. Their LP worth nil because the carebears orbit buttons all day. They can't trade protection from gankers for ISK with the carebears because Concord protect them for free and with bigger firepower. Remove Concord and goal-oriented PvP-ers and carebears would find each other, trading resources for protection.
I hope that DUST integration will make a change on this front one way or another, promoting competition and conflict, situations where there is reward in winning not just "lol i ownd som n00b". I'd like to make it clear that I don't want CCP to stop "griefing", I just want "EVE is real" conflict.
But no matter how many ways EVE is bugged, exploitable and caters lolkids, I'm staying. After all if you recruit a friend they don't give you a free Raven Navy Issue and 10M SP to him:
The other thing I was surprised is Jester saying (down in comments) "once a week or so, I jump-clone one of my mains to Empire to handle PvE so I have ISK for PvP. For those 24 hours, that main doesn't have access to 0.0 at all." Now Jester is one of the top PvP-ers of this game. He was flying in alliance tournament in a team that got into top 10. Why on Earth does he go to highsec for PvE? He could surely defend himself while doing PvE in his home system.
There were a series of my own finds: local channel helps PvP-ers, insurance helps PvP-ers and the largest nullsec alliances are as rich as a half dozen players.
Finally there was faction war. It was practically won by Minmatar and Caldari. Amarr and Gallente are non-existent, Minmatar and Caldari cross-plex to each other to farm LP. People claimed to come for good fights, but FW turned into an AFK-orbiting, multibox-bomber-missioning mutual carebearing field.
Combine these together and you get something much-much nastier than my older "EVE is more casual-friendly than WoW" post. There I just claimed that the main income of CCP comes from "highsec carebears" and they are protected from the PvP-ers by the highsec rules. PvP-ers are given their separate playground and motivated not to mess with carebears. They are catered either for historic reasons (EVE was started as a PvP game) or because of PR.
The truth is much-much darker than that. The highsec rules are created exactly to protect the "griefers" from the "carebears". The further discussion needs definition of 3 groups:
- "Goal oriented PvP-er" is reasonably good in PvP and PvE. Maybe not as good to win AT, but if pitted against the average non-carebear, he'd have at least 1:1 win loss. Pitted against a carebear would always win. He is motivated to reach some goal which can be Alliance Tournament positions, sov size of his alliance, being rich, whatever measurable competitive goal.
- "Griefer" is someone whose goal is to harm others, to see things explode
- "Carebear" is someone who don't want to PvP if there is a way to avoid it. Enjoys building things
Let me explain: Jester jumps to highsec to do PvE because its convenient. He doesn't have to dscan, he doesn't have to dock and reship to PvP, he doesn't have to watch local. In short, he could do his PvE without having to care about the random griefer. He surely doesn't afraid of him, he simply don't want to waste his time with him. I remember how annoyed I was back in WoW, Tol Barad when we did quests for "standing". Every now and then a griefer jumped on us, died but wasted 10-30 seconds of our lives. In WoW if you crushed him, he lolled, respawned and came back. In EVE after a few rounds he'd be out of money. Still my time would be wasted by that punk so I'd rather avoid him if possible. So does Jester. Most players claim that "80% of players are in highsec" is not true, 80% of the characters is. They say that they are low/null PvP-ers who PvE on alts. The goal oriented players avoid the harassment of griefers and do PvE half-AFK. If they couldn't do that, they'd do as they can: by forming blobs, protected PvE ops and so on. That would be pretty much the end of the lolroams.
What about the carebears? They would be an asset because they could be offered protection: "mine in our space, we protect you for half the ore". If you created the gatecamp, the more miners inside, the more ore/hour for you. It's PvE players who need the land, so they'd be motivated to seek protection from PvP-ers, just like the peaceful citizens are paying tax for cops and soldiers. Now the Concord provides it for free, so the PvP-ers are uncompetitive in selling protection. Concord also allow high density of players, neutrals can mine in the same belt in highsec or rat the same complex. This allows the PvP zones to be deserted enough that a roamer can avoid enemy "blops". Since there are 40K players online and about 7K star system, in every system there would be 6 players on average if they had to spread out evenly in lack of highsec.
The existence of highsec motivates goal-oriented PvP-ers to not defend themselves or the carebears from griefers, just move to highsec for PvE. Highsec feeds us all, why bother fighting with lolkids? Since the low/null land is unpatrolled, lolkids can run amok there, killing an odd bot, lost newbie or dumb ratter. They consider themselves kings of the hill while actually they are just like youth gangs fighting for crappy zones in the ghetto. They are poor, they are despised and avoided but no one is really motivated to kick their butt because no one wants their turf. The middle and upper class people are happy in their "highsec" of the good neighborhoods, they can't care less what's going on the ghetto. Remove the highsec, force people to mix and you'll get exactly what happens when a formerly busted neighborhood becomes financially interesting (because of a new highway or stadium or something): the rich, goal-oriented people evict the gangs that "owned" that land in matter of days.
I think EVE is designed exactly in a way to demotivate good players to get into conflicts with "ima pwnzor" lolkids, allowing the latter to exist. Just like with local channel, the lolkids believe that it protects the carebears from them, boosting their ego "if concord wouldn't be there, I'd own you all". The truth is the opposite: it protects them from anyone having a reason to fight them. I really hope that their wishes came true. I would gladly approve to a change that removes Concord from highsec, leaving only faction police and gateguns.
By the way this insight explains why goal oriented PvP-ers don't like carebears: carebears are nothing to them but competition when they do PvE. Their ore is cheap because the carebears mine a lot. Their LP worth nil because the carebears orbit buttons all day. They can't trade protection from gankers for ISK with the carebears because Concord protect them for free and with bigger firepower. Remove Concord and goal-oriented PvP-ers and carebears would find each other, trading resources for protection.
I hope that DUST integration will make a change on this front one way or another, promoting competition and conflict, situations where there is reward in winning not just "lol i ownd som n00b". I'd like to make it clear that I don't want CCP to stop "griefing", I just want "EVE is real" conflict.
But no matter how many ways EVE is bugged, exploitable and caters lolkids, I'm staying. After all if you recruit a friend they don't give you a free Raven Navy Issue and 10M SP to him:
16 comments:
It's wrong to think there isn't any industry and carebearing in 0.0. It is limited by game design, mainly a lack of stations, manufacturing slots, and the fact that you depend on items that are available only from empire, such as datacores. I distinctly remember the Mittani, in his now forgotten CSM forum thread was saying something like "0.0 dependence on Jita is something that disgusts all of 0.0. We want to build our own empires in 0.0, not be dependent on empire's veldspar slave miners".
Still no mater how many times I read your post I can't make sense of it. I especially don't know by which mechanic "the rich, goal-oriented people will evict the gangs", in hisec. You seem to equate PvPness with moronism (wrong), and more importantly (internet spaceship)money with power, also wrong. EVE history has proven every time that money does not guarantee power, quite the opposite it breeds fat, decadence, laziness, and that violence, aggression, will to fight and asshatery always wins over civilized carebearing. Currently EVE lives in the shadow of the collapse of the old NC. The NC was a self confessed carebear group, it had a massive industrial base in null, held all the tech in the north, had more money and supercaps than the old gods and was as close to your idea of the one empire as you can get. Yet it crumbled into dust when the drone Russians attacked it - you should really read http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/62 if you haven't already.
Or take Burn Jita. Now I'm too lazy to dig up your old posts, but I remember that prior to it, you were commenting something like "the goons are m&s who only kill noobships and frigates, they won't fight/have a change against an organized enemy (who you thought would be hisec)". Yet when the weekend came (I was there) it was the goons who had the disciplined/coordinated/doctrinal fleets, and "save Jita" eventually dissolved into a bunch of lolers whoring on CONCORD killmails. The hisec carebears either stayed docked up, logged off, or ended up on killboards. So how exactly are they going to evict the gangs (hordes) again?
On a related subject, I hope your pet loving girlfriend is training Caldari BS V to get into a Rattlesnake, right? I hope, for the universe's sake...
@Anonymous: the rich and goal-oriented groups will NOT evict the PvP-ers because they have no reason to. Highsec protects us and feeds us, why should we care about a few gankers.
I said that if highsec would be removed and people would be motivated to fight back, they would evict them easily.
The old NC and BoB suffered the same, the members weren't motivated to fight back. The rational choice when attacked by an enemy who has any chance to win is to JF your stuff to NPC and wait out the storm.
The only reason to fight now is out-of-game, cultural: you want to prove everyone that your culture is superior or the enemy is inferior.
Speaking of carebearing and supers, I'm curious what you have to comment on the lost nyx thing (http://themittani.com/news/alod-citizen-nyx), Maka's mail and the discussion that ensued. It gives you a peek into how supers are viewed by the 0.0 pvp crowd.
Speaking of 0.0 pvp crowds, the UMI-KK Tribute system's final station armor timer comes out Friday Aug 31st 02:42EVE. This is a crucial strategic system for NCdot to lose, and everybody and their mother is expected to show up. If I were you, I'd fly a covops up there to see a major sov 0.0 blob battle, or a major sov 0.0 blue-balled unopposed structure shoot (my money's on the latter).
I'd like to read the method of orbiting buttons afk. Really.
At the moment this thing is so popular, I can barely get to a button at all. At peak hours (21-23h server time) I face a lot of difficulties:
- gate leading to target system is camped by something that locks frigates, even pods before they could warp out. Obviously, I'm not getting to the button.
- acc gate leading to button is camped.
- button is already being orbited by 1-3 people, so noone is getting max LP from it. On top of that, the system is retarded and if you're not VERY close to the button at the end of capture, you may not get a single LP despite orbiting within range for the full duration. BTW I like idiots who whine when they get a visitor.
- you get hostile visitors while orbiting and must warp out.
I'm in the caldari militia, trying the Tama area, but even at 3-4 jumps far from Tama, these issues are constantly hindering my efforts. Outside of peak time it's fairly safe, but if you can't play then, you'll certainly not orbit afk nor make billions per month.
@Anonymous: Makalu is an idiot who will soon be sent back to lowsec by HB exactly because of what he is expressing now. "we r pvprs lol" so he won't/already don't have money to keep his fleet in ships.
"@Anonymous: Makalu is an idiot who will soon be sent back to lowsec by HB exactly because of what he is expressing now. "we r pvprs lol" so he won't/already don't have money to keep his fleet in ships."
wow, that's one huge mess of [citation needed]
What makes you think the HBC will send Makalu/-A- "back to low-sec" any time soon?
What makes you think that -A- is broke?
The HBC has shown no interest whatsoever to push into Catch and beyond and there no obvious reason for them to do so (what would they do with even more space, also risky without CFC support).
They are fighting a defensive war against -A- and somehow this will result in Makalu moving to low-sec?
The estimates of -A-'s income are > 300b/month, I linked the sources for that estimate in a blog comment a few days ago.
-A- didn't lose any space (only their allies did), so their main revenue stream (renters) has not been heavily affected by the war.
My feeling is that you are still buying into CFC+HB propaganda without any second-guessing "they can't afford to replace their Tengus, ergo they are broke" - to my knowledge the alliance replaces the hulls while the corporations take care of subsystems/fittings.
digression:
Whether or not to offer 100% reimbursements (especially on ships whose survival in battle depends heavily on the individual player's performance) is not just a question of money but also a question of philosophy.
Not providing full reimbursements is common among ~elite pvp~ entities (although logis & dictors are generally expected to be reimbursed) - their selective recruitment results in a membership that joins purely for pvp (and is financially independent) and results in a situation where the learning effect achieved by making losses hurt dominates the benefits of increasing fleet participation (which is generally high as inactive members get removed).
Look at any HBC fleet - they don't overheat hardeners, don't warp out when reps don't hold, don't stop MWDing when bombed unless explicitly told to, fall completely apart when the FC goes down, ...
100% reimbursement comes at the cost of creating F1 monkeys but dropping reimbursements would kill participation due to their mostly casual memberbase.
For a small corporation/alliance this choice is not hard to make as they generally don't have a lot of money anyways and can be extremely selective in their recruitment.
But if you do want to play the numbers game the trade-off between quantity and quality is an unsolved problem.
How do you create a very low barrier for entry to pvp (even for carebears) yet still get the players to improve continually?
I'd like this post.
Your view that the biggest beneficiaries of HiSec are the 00 crowd is correct, and removing Concord in all of EVE would force some more interesting interaction between its players.
There is an old saying: War is good for business, but bad for building.
How to prevent the "low Sec" effect of turning the wholle of EVE into a wasteland? Logistics are very complicated in a permanent war zone. EVE may end up looking a lot like medieval Europe, with almost no market, very low production and constantly raided by barbarian ordes.
What HS does is provide a safe enviroment for manufacture and trade. The question is: Is it possible to create this kind of enviroment with players only?
Maybe the reason that you can't find it in low sec is because is not necessary due to HS being next door.
This though deserves futher discussion. I'll stick around to see what else will come out in the comments.
"Remove the highsec, force people to mix and you'll get exactly what happens when a formerly busted neighborhood becomes financially interesting (because of a new highway or stadium or something): the rich, goal-oriented people evict the gangs that "owned" that land in matter of days."
In my neck of the woods, it's called Gentrification. I'm not sure if that's just a southern US term or a more widely used term.
It's "Scroll of Resurrection", not "Recruit a Friend" - might be a small difference, but it's not exactly or exclusively a "giving things to someone who doesn't even know how to play the game".
The truth is actually much more darker than "much-much darker than that", I hate the break it to you. Humans cannot be nicely divided into tightly organized and defined groups, no mater how much pollsters and social engineer hacks would like to believe. Your definition of "3 groups" is nonsense - especially given you haven't had any direct social interaction with any of these "groups" and rely on second hand hear say. PvPers and griefers are the same people. Sure, I've heard plenty of "I like targets that shoot back" nonsense (pussies!), and mass organized griefing of hisec is pretty much a goon invention, and some of the hisec wardec griefers would dock up instantly if someone dares to shoot back. But every PvP alliance will roam, gatecamp, run ops to hunt for anything they can find, fish, hotdrop, cloack recon, when they are not engaged in sov conquests. There are no "lolkids" running arround in hisec griefing "non-lolkids" whatever (and no one talks like "Imma pwnz0r lol", you can rest that straw-man now, thank you). There are no e-honourable white-knights of PvP that fight for some bullshit noble causes or goals, and are more skilled at it then barbaric, violent lolkids - and if they are, they quickly get slaughtered by the barbarians. PvP skill (in this game at least) directly correlates to natural aggression, violence, asshatery and will to fight and win. Also the guy that was griefing you in Tol Barad was a perfectly legitimate PVPer, and you getting annoyed at him was exactly the purpose (op success!). And everyone seemed to pine for the old days of open world PvP, when people would just massacre eachother in Hillsbrad and STV all day, before Blizzard ruined the game with arenas and BGs. Sorry dude, you just have a warped view of open-world sandbox PvP.
I make all my money in 0.0 from ratting and PI (plus alliance reimbursement), and do not do anything in hisec except sell my PI in Jita via alliance freighter service (and I may look into selling it in 0.0 dirrectly) and occasionally gank iceminers. As for your friend Jester, I suspect he needs to go bearing in hisec because he lives in one of the crappiest and poorest NPC 0.0 regions, where there isn't much to do except blow each other's spaceships up (Jester, if you're reading this by the way, can we have another post about how tech is so unbalanced, and how your alliance is space poor and has no tech, and how that is unfair, and how you are spacemad that you have no tech? It's been days since the last one).
Hell yeah, eliminate CONCORD from hisec, where do I sign up?
There are quite a lot of incorrect assumptions behind this post:
> “Local channel helps PvP-ers” I’ve pointed out twice now that PvPers can use map filters (“Players docked and active” and “Players in space”) to find out how many people are in a given system long before jumping into it, whereas there’s no equivalent that PvE players could use to know when a PvPer is in their midst save for constant Dscans.
> “Insurance helps PvP-ers” insurance helps anyone who loses a ship, but only really compensates losses of T1 ships. Certainly PvPers will lose more ships than PvE players, on the other hand a loss for a PvE player, especially a fairly new one, is usually a larger amount of their net worth than the average PvP loss. It’s more accurate to say that Insurance helps newer players in general and players learning a new role (in both cases they’re more likely to be in T1 ships than T2/3) and (financially) poor players. It explicitly doesn’t help gankers, however; no insurance payouts for losses to Concord.
> “Jester jumps to highsec to do PvE because its convenient” Considering that Jester has just published a huge list of his ingame activities I’d have thought you’d have spotted this before you published this, but go back and look at that list; the standard hisec PvE (Mining and missions mostly, plus Incursions for some) aren’t current activities. He runs R&D missions, does PI, blueprint research, invention and manufacturing. I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s those that he’s jumping back to hisec to manage. That has nothing to do with avoiding PvP or the safety of hisec and everything to do with the markets in hisec which those revolve around.
> “the largest nullsec alliances are as rich as a half dozen players.” No, they have as much income as half a dozen players. You have no idea how much ISK they may or may not have banked, how rich they actually are.
> “FW turned into an AFK-orbiting, multibox-bomber-missioning mutual carebearing field” No. There are now two groups involved in FW: There are people orbiting buttons or doing FW missions purely for the ISK rewards. There are also people who want easy access solo/small gang PvP. The existence of one group doesn’t preclude the existence of the other; there’s even a lot of crossover between the two. The button orbiters/mission runners are doing nothing to prevent the PvPers PvPing – they’re actually giving them more targets.
Other than that, the biggest problem I have with your claims here is that you seem to be making a lot of comparisons to real life but ignoring that EVE is a game; it’s optional for the players. How many hisec-only carebears are going to be willing to sign away half their income for protected mining vs simply quitting EVE? How many hisec Incursion runners flying what are effectively blinged out loot piñatas are going to lose the vast majority of their ISK when they get jumped by pirates and, faced with not only that loss but the reality that there will be more such losses, continue to play the game regardless?
You’re also claiming “in a month the griefers would be pushed out” and “the rich, goal-oriented people evict the gangs that "owned" that land in matter of days” but I don’t see how this would happen. Again, EVE is a game not real life. IRL there are systems that aid this process; it’s possible to increase the security enough that the previous inhabitants can be caught and prosecuted, putting them behind bars and out of the area. EVE has nothing like that – the best you can manage is constant armed surveillance over an area and the hope that that stops hostiles, you cannot permanently incarcerate them and even killing them is only a setback, not a permanent solution. The game has been specifically designed so that there is no impenetrable defence, even a manned bubble camp can be run by cloaky, interdiction nullified T3s which will have an easy time disrupting PvE activities, and they’re also hard to catch once they’re in-system.
Your entire premise seems to be that without highsec the PvE players will adapt as will the “goal-oriented” PvPers but the griefers will not. I can’t see any reason why this would be the case however – griefers have adapted previously to nerfs to insurance for griefing (leading to the rise of the cheap gankalyst as the tool of choice) and removal of other tricks used to minimise their losses as well as buffs to exhumer EHP. As I’ve already pointed out, it’s impossible for other players to adapt so well as to make ganking impossible from their side as well. I have no idea what form that adaptation will take – griefers using tech 3 cruisers flown conservatively rather than throwaway destroyers? Griefers staging out of wormholes, rushing through low/null exits and killing anything they find? More awoxers infiltrating corps/alliances, or even griefers posing as PvE players to get inside the blockades? I am certain that they will adapt, however.
Since this isn’t a thought experiment like most of your posts but rather a change that you are actually recommending for EVE, I think it’s also fair to take a wider view; at the moment trading depends on the security of hisec – not just to make orca convoys and other bulk shipping viable but because without the security of hisec to move items through, manufacturers, traders and customers aren’t going to congregate at a single point. There will be no more trade hubs – Jita without concord would rapidly become the most heavily camped system in the game until nobody used it anymore, and the same process would repeat any time enough buyers and sellers began to coalesce into a new hub. Aside from ruining your own career and that of the other traders, you would also functionally end the playstyles of all the bulk hauling freighter and Orca pilots who ply the hisec trade lanes. Without the large central markets and their associated markup there will no longer be a profit to be made providing arbitrage between them and smaller sales points. Additionally, without the convenience of centralised markets you will lose some players simply to the additional timesink of having to hop around a dozen systems whenever they want to fit out a new ship.
In addition to that it would also ruin the new player experience – new players will finish the tutorials/career agents, start trying to make ISK themselves and either be killed because they’ve unknowingly strayed into another corp/alliance’s PvE grounds, be killed because they’re in unprotected territory where gankers roam, or if they do find out in advance that they’re expected to buy into what are effectively protection rackets in order to make ISK then they may well fall foul of scammers who take their ISK/ore and offer no protection. Even those who do stumble into a legitimate protectorate may well quit simply at the idea of this system you’re proposing. That’s going to lead to even worse new player retention than EVE currently suffers from and will certainly make it harder to replace the veteran players the game will also be shedding as a result of this change.
Don't see it strange of you to stay with WoW as I remember you being quite rigid sometimes. MoP will cost you 35 EUR+subs for at least 1-2 months before you hit 90 and get bored with dailies.
Wouldn't it be better to choose GW2 instead? It currently lives up to many of my expectations.
Heck, even Lion's Arc chat is just a little worse than our /casual.
@Hivemind: you are right that many players wouldn't adapt but simply quit, but please note that you can't gank someone who don't play.
So highsec provides enough security for these targets to linger on, providing occasional fun to griefers.
It's also true that Jita would not survive the lowsec. But there would be new hubs within nullsec. Each powerblock would have its own hub.
It would ruin my current income, but we are talking about the game and not "how could Gevlon be more rich".
Newbie systems can be protected, as they are now. However I think it would improve new player experience as it would motivate powerblocks to recruit. The newbie corp would always have recruiters who would prove their good intentions by giving out "huge" donations (1M is huge for a newbie), help them with the start in order to recruit them. The very point of this post that now the other player is no way a resource to you as your honest offers are uncompetitive to the offers of Concord. So you can just ignore them or make dishonest offers.
@Gevlon: I'm not sure what your point is with "you can't gank someone who don't play" - it's also just as true that you can't benefit from their labour. If you're suggesting if enough people quit there's no more targets for gankers, that won't work; EVE requires at least some PvE to function, without it there's no new items being made. As long as there is PvE it will attract gankers.
"there would be new hubs within nullsec" really? Where are the items for those going to come from, then? Right now either finished goods or raw materials used to make them are imported from hisec hubs, which won't exist any more. There's also the question of who's going to stock them - how many alliance traders will risk their assets in the kind of diversified inventory found in hisec hubs? They'll likely have a much smaller customer base, which means they'll have a hard time moving less popular items that only move in small amounts even in a massive hub like Jita, and there's always the risk that their coalition loses the space and their inventory and invested ISK are stuck behind enemy lines.
"we are talking about the game and not "how could Gevlon be more rich"" I know, which is why I pointed out that you'd also be wiping out income and gameplay for every other trader and all the bulk haulers in the game.
"Newbie systems can be protected, as they are now." but I was talking about what will happen after they finish the tutorial and career agents and are cast out of newbie systems into the wide world of EVE. "it would motivate powerblocks to recruit." Why? If we've learned one thing from the GSF/TEST accounting sheets it's that alliances are comfortable with just enough income to cover fees and ship replacement. What makes you think they'll be willing to put in time and money to take on and train new players purely in the hope that they stay with the game, join their powerblock and contribute more than what they were given?
It is possible to compete with the offers of Concord already - that's the entire basis of the renter agreements that fund most of the non-tech holding nullsec powers. Should it be better incentivised to make it more attractive to players? Probably yes. On the other hand, there will always be a significant number of PvE players for whom the risk of lowsec/nullsec is too much regardless of the reward, or who prefer to put in little to no effort or attention for their income and will not trade that for any amount of extra ISK. For these players, removing hisec as you suggest will kill their gameplay.
@Hivemind: "you can't gank someone who don't play" refers to a significant part of the "metagame" in Eve. The quote from Conan should remind you:
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Many times the goal is to make your enemy quit the game entirely. While entertaining for the perpetrators, it isn't healthy for CCP. But if you keep in mind the Cod Wars, I suspect that Icelandic people enjoy harvesting tears.
http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2012/07/cod-wars-and-eve-online.html
Eve, also known as everybody versus everybody, is really several different games played in the same sandbox. You can't separate them and keep them individually viable. And if you make one of the competing game-factions happy (say, miners, to pick last month's love child), you upset many other players.
I've been in null-sec for about a month. The politics and need to look over my shoulder all the time is not fun to me at all. Younger people like the drama (just listen to teenagers if you forget how stupid it is, and give them booze if they need to get started). I get more than enough at the office, so I want to go home, mine some stuff, kill some rats and make some stuff (usually known as targets and ammo) to sell. Metagame, politics, .01 isk games - not for me. Between work and college, there isn't a lot of personal time to relax.
When whales fight, shrimp get crushed
Stuck in the region that has all the major drama going on, the most useful thing that the large alliances could do would be to say to the little people "stay out of our way, and we'll honor your rental agreements when we take over".
I said that if highsec would be removed and people would be motivated to fight back, they would evict them easily.
1. If high-sec was done away with, there would be no rational reason to haul stuff to any hub for sale. Not just big trade hubs like Amarr or Jita. It would be too dangerous for any but the most determined to deliver goods and shop there. There would not be more regional hubs, there would be no trade at all. It would resemble the wasteland of null-sec markets. Most of the stuff I make in null goes only to others in my corporation. You aren't blue to the ruling alliance, so you can't dock at the outposts to sell stuff to us. Trade stops dead.
2. Based on our experience moving our corp to null, most of the high sec players will quit rather than move. It isn't that the experience is too scary, it is that the experience turns Eve from "fun" to "not fun" for a lot of people. And there is no reason to be paying $15/month for "not fun." CCP can't survive losing that much of the paying customers.
3. The people who are interested enough in motivating others into battle are already in null-sec. You won't be motivating the high-sec crowd to "fight back" because those people are already present on the other side of the battle.
4. The folks who love PvP almost always loathe industry. To them, mining and making replacement ships/ammo is "not fun". It is too much like work. While I look at the spreadsheets/tables on sites like k162space and think "wow, that looks like some of the stuff in my cost accounting book."
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