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:
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