Khaos Wildfire
47th Space Militia
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Posted - 2013.07.20 07:50:00 -
[1] - Quote
I have recently returned to Eve to reconnect with old friends and have been trying to get caught up with many of the new changes.
I have considered extortion to make money in previous years, similar to what is going on now, so I'll bring everything out so as to hopefully shed some light and concern on this entire situation.
First of all, I've done a few ganks in high sec on poor miners. At least last year 1 catalyst with T2 mods could kill any mack in .5 space that did not have defenses. I did it for no reason other than being bored and needed refueled on tears.
I have also done a fair share of mining on alts. Sometimes I'd rather watch a movie but still make a few million isk.
There are a number of game mechanics that I would like to call into question here. Some have been poorly and vaguely addressed in this thread already, but I will extrapolate on them to make a few points.
First - this talking about bumping and harassment. Okay, that's fine if CCP wants to eventually call it harassment. I don't think that someone should be followed for hours on end, after all, CCP realizes miners (or anyone) are paying to play this game and will quit if they do not get to play....it's just good business.
However, bumping someone to effectively warp scramble them is definitely a cause for concern. It does avoid any negative effects associated with high sec piracy. Also - accounts can be created daily in order to make sure that your "bumping" ship isn't set to red - allowing you to access any system for scouting and bumping purposes. This means that setting these 'scout/bumpers" is not effective. It also means dozens of alts are created each day just for this purpose.
But that in of itself is not what is causing high sec miners to be concerned. (And for the sake of argument, lets remove the botting from the picture.) This bumping is associated not with ONLY with harassment - but with extremely costly ship destructions by -10 players in frigs and destroyers/
Their tactics are simple - emerge from low sec, avoid NPC destruction, and proceed to the system and belt in question. Then the neutral scout bumps the miner to warp scramble them, the -10 players warp to scout, dogpile on the miner, and everyone dies, except the bumper, who then scoops loot.
Extremely effective - and has been happening for most of Eve's history, just never at these levels.
This calls into question the intention and integrity of Security Status as a game mechanic if it's actually effective. It's intention was to stop pilots from flying around -10 blowing up other players in high sec... but in this day in Eve it's not actually stopping them. Eventually players who go -5 are, in theory, not allowed to fly around high sec. This is their punishment for not playing nice. But in this case there are no punishments - they will just refit into another ship and come back again to gank someone else.
I do not understand how avoiding ship destruction by avoiding Concord after an act of aggression is considered an exploit but avoiding ship destruction from various NPC patrols of pilots currently banned from high sec isn't.
Whatever happened to the days where players who went -10 got their sec status back up in order to gank someone?
So in closing, I think that bumping is not only about harassment, but about avoiding aggression (and I do not have a recommended solution, just making a point) and that I do not believe that Security Status matters for these low risk/high reward ganks of passive players in Eve.
I am not in favor of making everyone 100% safe in high sec nor am I offering any suggestions or advice on changing anything. I am only pointing out somethings that I see as a potential issue. This can only get worse.... can you imagine the extortion + Hulkageddon?
Thank you for your time if you read this entire post.
Khaos Wildfire
TL:DR - Bumping is more about avoiding aggression than harassment. -10 pirate gangs in frigs ganking players in high sec should be a cause for concern - security status has lost it's integrity.
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