Xavier Quo
InterSun Freelance
Moon Warriors
24
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Posted - 2012.01.11 11:18:00 -
[1] - Quote
There is a problem with the severity of the jump between 0.4 & 0.5, granted I do not have a great amount of time to explore every lowsec crevice, but in 0.6, 0.5 everyone and his gran are doing sites for absolute peanuts, in 0.4,0.3 nearly every constellation/system has a lone pirate and an alt scanning the sites to catch people, as well as the roaming gangs. For me, in real terms, running and salvaging hisec level 4's is still getting me more ISK in a few hours rather than trying to run radars in lowsec - I mean they are there but there are nearly always a number of people waiting for you to run them. Of course the Lvl 4's are boring and the low sec exploration is more exciting but if I can't even run one site in an evening then it is pointless.
The only time I saw what lowsec could be like was when I had some time off and played at a less busy time - yes you still had to keep on your toes but you could actually run a site or two.
To be honest I couldn't believe that one or two people would follow me around a few systems for hours on the slim chance they might gank me in a 3m cruiser. Even cloaking and going afk for half an hour they were still there! They must be incredibly bored! So more things for pirates to do might also be good. Smuggling looks like a winner for that.
The only other things I can suggest is that it might be time for 10-20% more lowsec systems, or even converting 0.5 into lowsec (don't know anything about null, might be also true), and also that stations can have a small retinue of ships to provide safe harbour for traders etc. For the life of me I cannot understand how it makes any sense that someone would invest in a station in a dangerous area of space and not proactively defend the immediate area around it in order to keep it as a profitable (safe) trading post. Of course you can flip this and have pirate stations that would shoot at me if I tried to dock.
Small NPC roaming navy gangs in the higher lowsec would make a lot of sense and keep pirates on their toes, infact you could also have the odd NPC convoys for pirates to attack, but I don't want that to take away from the real prey, i.e. noobs like me. Just generally more life and vibrancy like most of this game really needs.
As a fairly new (13m SP) player I see lowsec as a step towards null, to learn and grow as a player and do a bit of proving yourself and your skills etc for a bit before making the move to bigger things.
As it stands it's less of a step and more of a wall, i just can't get enough cash in low sec to afford a couple of BC+fitting losses. The other problem is that without really good skills for a tech 2 or 3 cruiser you have to use a specific harder fit BC to do any of the combat sites (only sites with a chance of decent loot as well) which is like a lamb to the slaughter for the vast majority of people waiting for you in low sec. Otherwise doing 4/10s in a nano arbitrator takes far too long. I do love a hard game but at points eve just makes you think YTF am I even trying 
I am not talking about the serious gatecamps, I can use the map to avoid them, and I like how the game allows a well set-up gang to own nearly everything in that situation but even if you took gates out of the equation there is still a lot wrong with lowsec. |