You know what could have been an awesome PvP expansion? Incursion. That could have been an awesome PvP expansion.
In September 2011, my KOTW was a player named Drake Arson who was selected by CCP to be the first EVE player to be accepted into a pirate faction as a full member. In this case, the faction in question was the Sansha Nation. Drake was a Sansha role-player and was going to be deployed as part of the military. As a going-away-come-back-soon present, CCP presented him with a high-sec super-carrier (sans drones, fighters, or fighter-bombers). He was then allowed to be part of an Incursion Live Event where he could use that super-carrier to attack players with its three high slots in support of an NPC Sansha fleet that was the basis of the event.
At the time, I welcomed this as both an expansion of CCP’s infrequent Live Events and an opportunity to get players involved in pirate factions directly (something that the pirate player base has wanted for a long time). Unfortunately, this turned out to be a blip on both fronts. One data point does not make a trend and all that. Neither experiment has been repeated in the year since that time and game development swung in different directions soon after.
But there’s nothing saying it can’t swing back.
I’m going to have more to say about this tomorrow, but CCP’s strategy for the last year or so has been player retention, rather than attracting new players. It’s sorta mostly been working, but CCP’s most successful expansions have been the ones that have pushed the envelope a little, not the ones that have been iteration-heavy. I’m all for iteration. But it’s a diet of bread, water, and vitamin supplements. It’ll keep a person alive for a long while, but it’s not particularly nourishing.
Which brings me back to Incursion and how it could have been an awesome PvP expansion. In this context, the answer is fairly obvious: CCP could have opened up the Sansha faction as a playable option the same way the four Empire factions are open today. In terms of game mechanics at that time, it wouldn’t have meant a whole lot but it would have been interesting for the Sansha role-players. Maybe the Sansha LP store could have been limited to Sansha faction members, or a few more Sansha items could have been added as Sansha faction LP store exclusives, the same way there are exclusives for faction warfare members.
You know what I can’t help noticing, though? The game mechanics are now in place to support pirate faction play.
Think about it. The only things that were really missing to make this possible were:
- the game mechanics to flag players as pirates; and,
- a way for pirate players to both make ISK and be made valid targets for everyone else, the same way pirate rats are today.
Both of those are now in place. Join the Guristas and as long as you’re a Guristas faction member, your Suspect flag is automatically turned on and stays turned on whenever you’re in space. That might make flying in high-sec slightly problematic, but a lot of pirate players avoid high-sec today due to sec status. In addition to the always-on Suspect flag, I would see being a pirate faction member as having one big disadvantage and one big advantage.
The big disadvantage: CONCORD would disavow players that were members of pirate factions. CONCORD wouldn’t automatically attack pirate faction players (the same way they ignore pirate rats today), but pirate faction players would no longer receive bounties from CONCORD. No more ratting for pirate faction players, and no more Incursions for pirate faction players.
The big advantage: the pirate faction the player belonged to would pay players bounties instead. What would they pay bounties on? Other capsuleers, of course! The pirate factions should pay based on the security status of the player killed, with a maximum bounty of 1.5 million ISK or so for killing a player with a 5.0 security status, plus a small amount of pirate faction LP given based on value killed. In addition, pirate faction players would get a small bonus for killing players that are part of the four Empire factions. CONCORD would continue to look dimly on attacking other players in high-sec, and the bounties would be small enough that it wouldn’t really be worth it there.
But can you imagine the massive buff to low-sec and to null? Pirate faction players would have to “rat” by shooting other players, and the more “carebeary” the player in question being shot, the more they’re worth. These players would then have an incentive to place bounties on the pirates, and the circle of life and death in New Eden would get a big new loop.
Kinda fun to think about. And it’s not the only proposal I’m writing this week. I’m just in that sort of mood all of a sudden. If this one isn’t goofy enough for you, come back on Wednesday. I’ve got something really off-the-wall to suggest then.
Anything obviously broken in the proposal above?
Discuss.
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Here cometh the deluge. Overheat all bear tear resist modules!
Why would the "carebears" cry about this? It's not like the pirates could smash up high-sec, and players already hunt anything PVE in low and null sec.
I think you are forgetting about cloaking. Some one could easily get into high and sit in a system cloaked. Would be the same as they do in null, just sit, mostly afk until people just get tired of them and go out to mine. Then its pick your target, blow it up, warp to safe spot and cloak. Then just wait and do it all over again.
But in Ripard's proposal, pirate faction pilots sill follow the same rules of engagement as all other players. So a cloak would not give you any more advantage than it does now, as CONCORD would still come to kill you.
perhaps limiting what pirates can use in high sec ie. in 0.6 space a pirate would be limited to a frig and not even faction at that? have the ability to kill without concord involvement, this would mean his risk if the other player is skiled and flies a cruiser
Maybe i am reading too much into it, but if they were in an npc type of faction whey not get the benefits/penalties for that? No docking in an empire controlled station, no concord penalties, etc. You are for all intents and purposes a rat, probably no .9 or 1.0 system access, but the rest should be fair game, if you can manage to get past all the people that want to claim the concord bounty on top of the player bounties on you.
how to farm:
1 make noob alt.
2 get it in pirate faction.
3 kill main in a noob ship x1000 (or cheapest frig)
4 $$$
I believe this can already happen in current FW. Have your main in Minmatar FW and a noob alt in Amarr FW. Kill noob over and over. Get LP. If you're only killing cheap ships, then its not going to be worth it at all under the current reward system equation. Rookie ships and frigs cost next to nothing for the hull, and there's a limited amount of mods you can pack it wirth. The amount of LP awarded would be so minimal, even if done excessively.
Confirming that this would be a huge waste of time. A lot easier to just get an alt and sit on a FW button in some dead system and get lp's. And if you bought a frig, and then had your alt blow it up, you would be getting 20% of the value (if based like the bounty system). I don't think you will be getting space rich that way.
Are there really people who STILL don't understand how the new bounty system works?
or you do it 20% payout like the bounty system.
I understand the need for any fascist organization to vilify a segment of its population and then persecute it while it justifies its treatment of them. It lets people feel good about themselves and there is little actual risk when you choose that part of your population that has difficulty in fighting back. Goons have pushed this agenda for years against miners and other so called carebears. It has become part of the Eve culture to follow this line of thinking. Even people that claim to hate the goons will gladly put 100m or so into the goon coffers without a thought.
However it would be unwise to allow the wholesale slaughter of miners in high sec. To allow any organization or group to simply fly around and blow up the industrial segment of the population would soon see a dramatic drop in that population. And why the focus on a bounty place on mining ships in the first place? When you are fighting rats, the bounty is in relation to the threat that the ship represents. Exactly how is a hulk or a mack a threat to a battleship?
A better solution to this would be a bounty based on the skill points of the pilot and the ship. Perhaps some sort of formula could be determined based on the sp of the pilot, ehp, and dps. That would give a much better picture of the threat level of the ship would it not? Overall i think this is a good suggestion, one that has been long overdue. Eve needs its pirates and they should be given the same opportunities as the rest of the population. But to simply give them easy bounties with little or no risk just does not make sense.
Nobody is suggesting allowing wholesale slaughter of highsec miners, the being ignored by CONCORD section means that the highsec players still benefit from CONCORD protection just as they always have. "CONCORD wouldn’t automatically attack pirate faction players (the same way they ignore pirate rats today)" means that the pirate player can travel through highsec without CONCORD attacking them, but attacking highsec players would still be responded to violently by CONCORD.
It would actually offer more protection to highsec players from the pirate players in that anyone in highsec would be free to attack the pirate player on sight, without waiting for aggression, allowing the pirate to be killed before he can reach miners.
Kind of, EHP and DPS are only part of the story. Neuts, Webs, ECM etc can make a ship much more dangerous, but take up slots that could benefit EHP/DPS.
Just using straight skill points would be messy too, you would have to differentiate between combat skills and indy/science/whatever because only one category actually has an impact on difficulty to kill.
"Nobody is suggesting allowing wholesale slaughter of highsec miners"
WRONG. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED AND WE ARE GOING TO DO MORE TO MAKE SURE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS.
ZOMG ALL CAPS MAKES IT TRUE!!
That statement was in the context of this thread, there are always people out there in EVE pushing for more highsec ganking.
caps lock, retard cruise control
lol, your one of those guys who thinks shooting at slow moving, poor armed and armoured ships, likely driven by rather pvp green players somehow make you a pro pvper?
Be a real man, take a tech 1 cruiser or something into low sec and get into some fights with people who know what there doing and bring back a Tengu kill or something were you don't outnumber him 10 to 1!
And if your talking about Hulkagedon… that was one of the most clever idea's that ever come out of Goonswarm, and made possible by how the trade system built into eve >.<
"CONCORD wouldn’t automatically attack pirate faction players (the same way they ignore pirate rats today)"
Needs clarification. I read that as "CONCORD ignores belt rats today, so they would treat player pirates the same way – not automatically attacking them".
All in favor is correct. CONCORD wouldn't *automatically* attack pirate-flagged players means just what it says: they could enter high-sec space without CONCORD attacking them, but would have Suspect flags that would allow other players to.
Once they engaged in high-sec ganking, CONCORD would attack them like any other high-sec ganker.
Okay listen people, first of all, only -7, you guys are getting soft. I think you are wrong. It would be far better to treat them like rats. CONCORD DOES NOT SAVE PLAYERS FROM RATS! Why should they do it now? In order for this to work and be fair, if you are going to belong to a group you should get the benefits of the group. Concord does not blow up rats that attack miners in the belts, it does not put an end to an incursion, and they should not blow up pc rats.
Every where i have ratted, be it in high, low, or null, the bounty placed on a rat has always be based on the threat level. Not that you don't smile when you get a hauler spawn, but mostly you get bounties by killing things that can shoot back. It is wrong to place higher bounties on ships that can't shoot back which are no threat at all. If some one can get into a system, and find a defenseless mining op, they by all means blow the crap out of them. But make the pay out proportional to the risk.
Because hisec rats fly frigs, not decced out most like Nightmares.
In order to keep farming down as grant suggested perhaps tie the bounty amount to
1: Sec status
2: Skillpoints on the victim
3: Value of the target
So killing a high value target with lots of skillpoints and hihg sec status (as you suggested) have the highest bounty, and newbs in newb ships would be very low.
The idea itself is solid.Making the LP store for faction members only creates an interesting niche for a certain play-style
…Yarr!
This makes more sense to me. I also would suggest that 1.5mil as a max for player bounties is pretty low, NPC battleships have bounties this high by default. And killing a NPC battleships is an awful lot different from killing even the smallest of player ships. Obviously the bounty should be reconciled with the value of the ship, and using the skillpoints is a good idea too. But the Sec status seems questionable to me. Pirates do not care what the sec status of their target is, only if they get loot from the kill. It does make some sense in that high sec statuses are gained by killing pirate NPCs so i guess it works too.
excellent idea,
if CCP is never going to get around to opining up the Jove as a race (even in a NPC capacity like the pirate factions) then opining up the pirate factions to having a factional warfare base would be a cool new addition.
i have heard of several instances where pirates have attempted to take over new systems (there is one on the edges of stain where there is the only permanent 10/10 in the game (1) ) and angels did something recently as a CCP live event (2).
1 evemaps.dotlan.net/system/3GD6-8/celestial…
2 lowseclifestyle.blogspot.ca/2012/09/live-e…
it would be very cool if there where one or two faction buffer systems between pirate NPC space and empire space that players could influence the same way they influence factional war fare today
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycMR_n4DHmo
hell yeah thats a very interesting feature suggestion. where is the like button for eve news posts?
after thinking about it a second, wtf that would be a hell of a feature. i mean if alliances would be allowed to join pirate factions, that would be an incredible pvp source.
Good Idea! But take it a bit further. Allow players to join any pirate faction and a new CONCORD faction. Then each player in those factions would have permanent bounties on them similar to the new bounty system. The only thing is, the bounty never runs out. Anytime a CONCORD player destroys a pirate player's ship, he or she receives ISK equal to 20% of the value of the destroyed ship and perhaps some CONCORD LP as well (to be used at a newly created CONCORD LP store).
The reverse would also be true: any pirate player destroying a CONCORD player's ship would receive a similar amount of ISK & LP. These players could freely shoot each other in lowsec without the CONCORD NPCs interfering but CONCORD NPCs would keep the pirate players out of hisec.
I think Ripard's proposal is the basis of an excellent idea. Of course, the details may have to be thrashed out to prevent exploits and farming, but the general idea is sound and would increase the potential for emergent gameplay.
So you need a mechanic to allow you to profitably gank new and weaker players in hi-sec – FAIL.
no, read the fucking article you retarded imbecile
When I first started eve almost 4 years ago, I thought I would be offered this opportunity.. Still waiting.
well I for one, applaud, these so called "golden handshake" clubs…..gets it depends whether, your the one bent over, or on yer knees, I reckon…!The very reason I stop playing EvE,, because I too noticed how……
Drake, remembering back to being somebody so active in the live events, missed a bit of what was happening. The issues from ccp back in those days meant they couldn't perform live events.
Second, they are being rebooted, and have their own forums section for a post holiday start up.
Third, eve isn't about pvp. It is pve with a pvp isk sink. Pvp based live events will fail with the only people really attracted to it being the current people who can afford to throw away the ships. The live events were successful because they were straight up pve fun without any isk concerns or other political fap that infests every other facet of eve.
How To Learn The Bounty System!
1. Get into a corp / alliance with lots of PVP activity, preferably more killmails than lossmails…
2. Go pew with them.
3. While splattering your foe's innards all over the cosmic void, review their bounty and lossmail.
4. Repeat until you get it.
Its an interesting idea, but eve would fail cascade if the normal function of high-sec were not protected. If miners don't mine, manufacturers wont build, and pilots would run out of ships and ammo.
Some ideas that could help this work:
1) Belonging to a pirate faction gives you access to 2 technologies:
a) high mod – transponder scrambler: active module that allows you to fly through high-sec without being Concorded; a kind of cloak against Concord – thus pirate can act like NPC pirates, who we can now assume have been using these modules. It weakens the pirates by taking away a high slot, giving carebare pilots an advantage. If more than 3 of these modules are within 250 km, they start gaining a 5% failure chance (deactivate) per each additional module every 20 sec. If they fail, the deactivate and a call goes out to Concord. Pirates rarely gather in large numbers, and this would explain why. If the pilot runs out of cap, the module deactivates and Concord comes. This module would also make you invisible on local chat until you "spoke" just like in w-space. You'd appear cloaked and show up, but then disappear as you activate the module.
b) array – Jump Gate Relay: An acceleration gate-like array that must be deployed within a certain range (500-750km?) of a jump gate; it allows you to piggy-back on the gate, jumping you into the system the gate would send you too. The arrays would function and be controlled similar to a jump bridge, using fuel, and controlled with passwords and standings, but be conquerable. If there's another friendly relay on the other side, you appear at it instead of the actual gate. You''d need to purchase these with pirate LP. You could limit 1 relay per gate, making them hotly contested assets. Maybe upgradeable, like i-hubs, so they can be made hard to probe down, provide a field that extends the "unprobeable" effect to 15km or so, make it more durable (like shield hardeners), or even full blown shields. Lots of possibilities here
2) Further restrictions to pirates:
- No cloaking. Concord can turn off our cloaks when they flag us for termination. Seems reasonable they can do the same to player pirates.
- Criminal flags mean any pirate can be killed on sight (creating a job for anti-pirate militias).
- Every pirate kill increases his bounty, paid by Concord. You gain sec-status for killing them.
- No docking at stations. Gate, pos, npc customs and police ships, and station guns still shoot at them on site.
- No POSes, makes it more difficult for them to resupply.
- Improve locator agents to bolster bounty system; quicker, maybe even get location requests through convo's in space (why do you have to fly there to talk to someone?).
These options give 'carebares' some tactical advantages with neut/nos that don't require a lot of training, and increased safety at gates and stations, and makes a life of piracy very inconvenient and challenging (which makes sense). It gives pirates some interesting options for bypassing gates and sneaking around behind the scenes. Pirates can bypass a lot of these negatives with teamwork and non-pirate affiliations (alts) who can resupply them. The idea being that inconvenience will deter some pilots and keep high-sec from devolving into low-sec. I think it's important to keep the number of pirates in a gang low. Historically rats show up in gangs of 1-5. I think that should be maintained for players pirates also. This keeps engagements down to the skirmish / squad level, and gives high-sec pilots a chance.
So, you are a highsec carebear that would like to be "awesome" by shooting other carebears like fish in a barrel. And that is worthy of a blog post?