Except it didn't make things even, it made things completely in the pve players favour. The Pve Player only needs to tank the rats or the player. The pvp player needs to tank the rats and the player. The pve player also only needs the rats ewar to hit once to get away, and will have any rat webs/neuts helping them as well. The PvP player already needs to fly a ship able to penetrate hostile space (i.e. fast and therefore light) and use fitting space for a point, while the pve player only needs to tank long enough for the cavalry to arrive. So to have any chance of success the pvper needs to fit lots of damage, lots of mobility and a point, but now they also need to fit lots of tank and counter ewar for the stockholm syndrome rats.

To be fair the rat aggro would be random, or more obviously the rats would take the opportunity to gtfo (in belts at least).

Personally I think some standing related mechanic on the part of the rats would be very cool, have good standing to the rats in question and they wont attack you over the ratter who will likely have terrible standing.

And who else is there to fight exactly? The only time any 0.0 kiddies fly in groups of less than 10 is when they rat.

they arent your friend either, so why would they protect you? Doesnt compute.

do you maybe have a link to devs view on the matter? just out of interest.
IIRC they had PvE in focus as they changed the AI.

well because its primarily part of the environment you are interacting with, you farming it, for example? Or maybe "it worked for 10 years fine, now it broke pvp". You can think of unlimited amount of lore reasons.

Even with old AI you werent completely "immune" to the environment, a new rat respawn targetted you too, I also died many times to rats in anomalies, even as those days rats didnt protect the PvEer.

nope. the farmer is farming the "environment", not the pvper.

it did work fine, the majority of work wasnt in killing the ratter but in finding, probing, dscanning and tackling him. That was fine. If he let him catch after all the defensive and home advantage, he should die. Now its impossible, as I and others explained to people of your kind, you need heavy gear for it you basically cant field in these regions, rendering PvEers completely immune vs. solo roamers. The only way is a big gang or a cyno alt camping your system.

You missed the memo. I'm basically saying that I need a quality of a ship to gank ratters, that I cant realistically field in that environment.

I'm still saying, if the NPCs are your issue, then why not ask CCP to have the NPCs warp off when a PVP aggression timer is activated in site.
Once the aggression timer ends, the NPCs warp back (takes one minute after aggression stops).

This means neither the ganker, nor the ratter, have to worry about the NPCs.

edit....To be more specific, this would be based off the weapons timer, so there's no confusion.

no, its not insane, its real. You are there for rats, you spawn them, so you should eat most damage from them, all I'm asking for is for rats not preventing PvP encounters inside sites and not protecting the ratter.

its not that much about logics or lore, its about gameplay rules and balance.
If the requirement for something is unrealistic to meet, it can be called as "broken". So is the profession of solo roams after ratters.

yes and this is why the game is broken. since when is the amoung of risk a valid argument for anything in eve?
I can gank a jumpfreighter with a couple of catalysts, virtually not risking anything compared to a value of a JF.
You can farm mountains of ISK without risking virtually anything if you do it right (which is not really hard). Hell, you can even do it in a cheap fully insured battleship, risking only 2-3 ratting payout ticks if at all. If the hunter dares to roam hostile space in a recon ship, he's risking way more than that.

Thats exactly why it worked, it simply wasnt worth enough camping you, so you was able to move in hostile area at all. Bring a T3 and they wont allow you to hunt, they will try to camp and bait you constantly for teh lulz of shiny KM. A kill on a cheap ship like recon or bomber simply wasnt rewarding enough for defenders to have much of effort fighting you off. This is primary reason why you could do it at all.
Grab a T3 and go hunt in deklein or any other heavily populated ratting region, see what happens.

T1 frig is countered by a single sabre.
Never head of people doing that in a T1 frigate anyways.
If a dude in a T1 frigate would be able to spread any kind of terror on ratters, well, then you are just terrible.
Price isnt even that important to me, more drastic is the fact is that a chance of a shiny expensive kill for the foe wont allow you to move realistically safe in hostile areas. First report in intel channel will spawn gatecamps and what not. This is why noone is doing it. this is why the game is unbalanced right now, the required tool for the job is currently not realistic. This is why a huge pvp profession is dead and many people stopped playing or logging in much.

My point is that if i point them they should be forced to 1v1 me, and it should not me being forced to 1v1 him and also tank the entire site (cause everything swaps). That isnt as big an issue with stuff like tanky cruisers or bs cause tanking the site isnt that hard usually but for ships whos primary defence isnt paper tank and/or ehp but getting under guns and signature and mobility its almost impossible.

players are all content for each other thats why we play a pvp oriented MMO, farmers have always been content for pvpers, pvpers have always been content for other pvpers. whats your argument actually? People get farmed all the time, why are PvErs special? Those are actually the worst ones, not contributing anything to the game, inflating the economy with easy isk while even demanding the environment to protect them as we all see at your instance, Mike Voidstar.

and yeah Robert is me too, the toon I used to post with in forums.

here a short summary of all points I provided
(please dont start on this again, all of that has been reiterated x times on previous 8 pages):

- rat aggro skewed the balance for hunters and raised the requirements beyond viability (evident from killboards)
- rat aggro killed all realistic chances for solos to catch prey because required gear is too heavy and slow (you need nano)
-> risk of hunting out of scale compared to reward (heavy stuff easy to bait, easy to catch + nice killmail <-> little success)
- removed (or as good) whole class of pvp content (solo hunters, see prior reasons)
- rat aggro stacks on top of other game changes which made ratting lots safer (MJD, marauders, shift to cruiser meta)
- massively decreased risk for farmers resulting from above reasons, totally unneccessary
- environment protecting the farmer makes no sense, from gameplay as lore reasons

so, you're discussing a topic which you have 0 experience with, is that what you're saying? This would explain a lot.
I usually stay away from stuff I have no business with or no clue about.

But I dont quite believe you. Since you care so much about rats, and you cared much about afk cloaking, there are no other things in 0.0 which drive ratters more mad than ratter gankers and afk cloakers. You cant tell me that someone would advocate for pve safety so much like you do if he wasnt personally affected. Post with your main.

Killmails appear on killboards without you posting them on your own.

We do know, and if we do the pver has 0 chance, at least in lowsec. But it forces us into very specific ships, if i roam around in my frigate and i see a cruiser doing and outpost i could 1v1 him, if he is bait fit or competent i lose, if he is not i win, in theory - but in reality the rats instantly switch to my frig blowing me up.

Rat aggro doesnt matter in 99% of the cases for big stuff but it matters in 100% of the cases for frigate stuff, if i catch your ratting tengu in mine you are dead, not matter if i get the whole room to shoot me in a 10/10. The rats dont matter for that, and if they shoot you instead of me that makes more sense rp/logic/gameplay wise but makes no difference.


The only things they actually does is kill of frigate and dessie piracy and allows for setups in fights where one team suddenlly has to deal with absurd damage and ewar while the other one gets a free kill (i.e if 2 pvpers fight and 1 set up inside first).

Yes, there is no logical reason for rats to swap on people who have ewar fitted. CCP has stated in the past that the rat aggro changes were there to prevent people from exploiting rat aggro mechanics, not for pvp reasons.

So as by your own words it makes no sense, it should be changed.

Yes, as this is how it was supposed to work and a solution to a different problem is why it no longer does.

I want to remind you that you are trying to discuss f**ing with a virgin.

mike voidstar has no clue about nor has he ever been involved in any meaningful combat pvp, dont expect any level idea from him, all he knows is that you should bring a "proper ship for the job", mhkay? So the other duders in here with 3 kills in their lifetime on eve-kill are trolling you with their valuable opinion how pvp should work.

this mindset is not wrong or stupid and has a very good basis.

It's a good point because CCP adjusted rat AI a while back to make them prefer targets of the right size. So if a frigate pilot jumps in on a battleship fighting off cruiser and frigate rats, that frigate pilot is likely to get jumped by the rats. You can alternatively use this to your advantage, to split up the incoming DPS.

So an idea occurred to me, as ideas often do.

What if rats did have blue lists?

What if, by having positive standings to a particular pirate faction (obviously it has to be one of the ones that offers missions), that group would be less likely to switch aggression to you - the higher your standing, the lower the chance. So now, you can specialize the hunting of ratters by running missions for that pirate faction, thereby improving your relations with the pirates and getting you more opportunities to kill the ratters preying on them, regardless of the region the ratter is in.

There are some pretty obvious gaps in the rough idea, but if there's interest I could flesh it out in a more robust manner and post it in F&I,

why do you guys think that quoting status quo is helpful in any way? Yes, we know rats dont care if you dont shoot them, in current implementation - thats exactly the thing we want to get changed again. Rats spoiling player kills is an awful mechanic.
Ratters already have all advantages on their side, they dont need more.

you cant blame people who they dont want to cross a certain line - its a game whose rules should be cathered for players, how they want to play the game or under which conditions.. - this argument is hilarious, "your fault CCP made it too hard for you, adapt or die, noob, trololol".
The only meaningful indication whether a mechanic is good or not is the acceptance on part of the player, nothing else.
Same situation as if CCP would cut mission rewards by 75% and people like you would come around the corner trolling players for not doing them anymore, you still could after all, at 25% reward... You get the idea hopefully.

Yes, after all the time spent and hassle of getting around myriads of obstackles, pitfalls and traps of deep hostile space you shouldnt have to bother about NPC negating all of your massive effort getting to that point.

we've been all over it 15 times in this thread and I learned that I dont want to argue pvp topics with a pve high sec bear because its like, well, talk about fking with a virgin... he knows the theory, yet noone would ever care about his opinion.

You simply CAN'T judge or evaluate any of pvp related aspects of this topic, nor do you accept the opinion of people who can, so why are you here? If you hunted ratters a bit, if you knew how much effort and skill it requires to get those kills you'd guaranteed feel differently about getting jammed and hammered by ******* NPC at that point after hours of hunt and see the ratter warping off and hear him laughing from under his POS force field.

So, go back to Motsu and talk to other mission runners about stuff you have an idea of. I'm not going to reiterate on anything once again. You want the add on PvE safety, you like rats quasi protecting you, I want the opposite, this is all what it boils down to.

no, because you're a virgin trying to discuss you know what.
Your agent prolly be ready for next L4, I'd check.

sure sure, I won them.
After all, the main purpose of PvP and hunting PvEers is denting their isk/h graph for a little. Everyone knows. lmao.
Your L4 agent seems busy.

I don't want npc mechanics changed so risk averse kiters flying garbage.... err garmurs can conduct 'pvp' with zero risk.
I want to jar some of your 'belt rats are too dangerous' tears.
I enjoy your awesomeness!

(I guess I have 3 points)

That probably has come up already in this thread, but there it is anyway.

I'll try to play devil's advocate here and say that in the end rats, for the most part, are resource to be harvested with adequate tools. Although instead of binary evaluation of said tool by game mechanics (for example: is this mining laser? yes, you can gather your ore), adequacy is tested in combat (can you deal this DPS and not be toasted in the process? here's yor ISK and loot opportunity).

So, if we treat it like that (and I guess not many people would object if we are talking about practical matters), is it really a good idea that we currently have almost-rocks defending almost-miners in case someone jumps the latter?

Of course, abstract principle is not the only concern, there may be others, like "do we want ratting/ganking easier/harder in practice?", but there's that.

Loving the way you immediately dismiss someone because the character they post with on these forums essentially has no kill board. Wondering if the EvE reality of many accounts, many characters has even entered your mind. Perhaps the character Mike Voidstar has no kill board, does that mean the person who owns that account/character has no PvP experiences?
Your assuming that the person behind the character Mike Voidstar has no PvP experience and to that I have to say.
When you assume you make an "ass" out of "umption" and he has enough problems with a name like that. No this is not original I read it in a thread a long time ago but it seems appropriate here. All credit to the original poster of this tid bit I just wish I could remember the name to give proper credit.


Setting all of the attempts to discredit people aside we still come back to the simple basic facts of this argument.

1. In times past rats never changed aggro.
2. For reasons we will never know CCP changed that and rats now switch aggro with a well understood hatred for E-War of all types.
From these simple "facts" that even you agree with we can deduce that this is working as intended since CCP is the group that made it this way.

Added to these facts we have the historical precedence that CCP rarely if ever roles back changes like this.

Taken as a whole these three "facts" bring us to the logical conclusion that this is not going to change back to what it was before no matter what you think. And you know what I am good with that, I can go out and fly my pixel spaceships in reasonable comfort knowing that those who control the game have at least some understanding of game balance and how to achieve it. And "IF" at some point in the future CCP changes the rat AI then I will adapt to it as I did the last time, or I can simply un-sub and spend my gaming time else where on the internet.

In conclusion I want to quote a rather large group of players around here.
"Adapt or get out", it is your choice. Personally I hope you can and will adapt to this new way of things and stay in the game, but if not them as my dad used to say do not let the door hit you in the back side on the way out. Oh and please contract all of your stuff to one of the groups in game dedicated to helping new players as you last act.

a little pvp requires multiple amount of skill from what farming a repetitive plex or anomaly can ever get.
Moreover, you dont need a lot of ISK to get into pve, not at all. You can start farming small anomalies, even bigger ones can be done with ishtar or VNI, which is really an entry level drone boat.

What has that to do with anything? Its not impossible or even hard to kill pvers, but it forces you to blob or severely outclass them (which vs pvers means brinning the same class) which is an issue.

And a startios easily tanks that, but nobodie ever doubted that pver/ratter can be killed. Thats not the issue, if i see a 2 month old caracal do a warpable anomaly i could take my curse and get a free kill with 0 issue, but i dont want that, thats boring is ****. What i want to to bring a t1 frigate and have a even fight, but due to how rats work i cant.

thats why we are asking for a change, to stop rats defending the farmers.