Non-consensual combat restrictions?

Seismic Stan at freebooted has a post up about "non-consensual combat restrictions" summing up the Blog Banter discussion over whether people should be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve. Since this is a topic that has been affecting our new corp recently (and will continue to affect it) I figured I may as well put my oar in the water and cover this topic a little.


Our corp (SyNgeN-Z) was created in December 2011 and recruited members almost entirely from characters inhabiting the rookie chat channel at that time (I'd like to point out this wasn't direct recruitment; more an invitation to join together in pvp silliness in rookie ships, followed by sharing a chat channel ("syngen public chat"), leading to the formation of a corporation). The corporation has already been wardecced four times, so the newbies in our corp have all experienced this non-consensual pvp.


The corp basically split into three cliques during this time. The first group were quite happy to be involved in the wars, using them to hone their defensive skills and blow up in t1 frigates; this group actively sought out war (although perhaps not very successfully).

The second group basically ignored the wars, trying to stay in "safe" systems and docking up to socialise when wts appeared in local.

The third group (often previously members of the second group who had been forced to participate in the wars) were quite anti the non-consensual pvp.


Eve is a harsh mistress, and rule #1 is rule #1 for a reason, as I'm fond of saying. "Do not fly what you can't afford to lose" is a huge culture shock for most gamers coming from less extreme MMOs. Grinding through missions until you can afford a Drake, then losing that ship on its first outing can be disheartening. Losing in Eve carries real penalties. Learning the first rule isn't easy, and being forced to learn it very early on in your Eve career is difficult indeed (although I'm pretty sure will pay huge dividends in the future!). Add to that a general lack of understanding of hisec war mechanics amongst new players, and it's quite easy to see how people can become frustrated.


Seeing how players respond to these challenges is very educational. Some don't accept (yet) that this is how Eve is; you can wish it to be different but as it stands, it is what it is. Many want to join a shield alliance (once they learn of the existence of such entities). Some drop corp and return to the less confrontational life in an NPC corp, or a less pvp oriented corp (hoping the latter will be less likely to be wardecced). There is a general feeling that there is, or should be (surely, surely there must be?) some mechanic written into the game that will enable confrontation to be avoided. Some learn the lessons and adapt.


It is this last group that I find to be most fascinating. The change in some, from a mother protective of a new battle cruiser, to a maniac throwing (cheaper) ship after (cheaper) ship into danger almost irregardless of the odds can be startling. These are the players that will be happy to lay down their ship during fleet engagements, knowing they will come out of the other end of the process a ship down, but an experience up. These are the people out in null sec, with no sov holding alliance to hide behind, ratting before they're a month old. These are the people that can buy a new ship, fit it, then fly straight into a gate camp and lose it, and laugh the loss off. These are the people I want to fly with.


Are these good lessons to learn? They're certainly difficult lessons. For some, maybe too difficult. But for those that learn them and carry that learning with them as they move on in their Eve careers, they are lessons of incredible value.


But wars cover only half of the non-consensual pvp in hisec. Ganking must also be looked at. The same basic lessons are of value here; a character's first Hulk is an expensive investment. If you haven't already learned rule #1 when you get ganked then it's likely to be a shock. Perhaps more of a shock than being blown up as a war target since the latter have had warning, and probably some instruction from the corporation.


I love a good gank as much as the next person, but it does seem to me that here the game mechanics are a bit... well... inexplicable. We like to think that risk and reward are balanced in Eve. The risk that miners run when mining is that they'll be ganked. The reward is the minerals that are extracted (or more precisely the ISK generated from the extracted minerals). What risk do we gankers face? What price is paid for our ganks (by us)? It seems very little. Even without insurance a poor gank breaks even, and good ganks show a profit - not to mention the entertainment value. To me, this isn't balanced.


There should be real penalties to ganking people. The relatively small drop in security status is insufficient. It should be much bigger. It should be harder to recover that sec status hit too. Grinding sec status not only provides the sec status, but also plenty of ISK off the killed rats. We gain ISK from ganking, and again from raising sec status in order to repeat the endevour!


I think a real use for lowsec could be found here. I think there's an opportunity for CCP to make hisec a little safer, but not substantially change anything that can happen there, and to make lowsec more interesting. I think:

• Illegal killings in hisec (i.e. from ganking, where no kill rights existed previously) should hit sec status harder. Maybe a 30% change, or a 50% change. People could (and would) still gank, but there would be a larger penalty to it. It could be fun if CONCORD could add bounties to players, and have other players act as the police to hunt down people in hisec - this would perhaps give current hisec wardec corps other targets to hunt (and yes, I am suggesting CONCORD gets a nerf to enable this).
• Sec status gains + NPC bounty payments should be removed from null sec (after all, it's not policed so why should CONCORD care what happens there?). Nullsec still has a role due to the improved resources obtainable there.
• Lowsec space should be the place where the transition between hisec + null sec takes place. It's monitored by the empires, and CONCORD, but it's the wild west of space. Sentry guns still intervene but CONCORD itself doesn't. Ratting here, or killing others with low security status, is rewarded with sec status gains + bounty payments. Unlawful killings cause the same standings changes as they do today. Lowsec rats could be buffed, moving the battleship rats to (or at least including them in) lowsec belts.

To my mind at least, the non-consensual pvp aspect to Eve is what makes Eve Eve. It perhaps should be tweaked, and there may need to be some rebalancing of risk and reward for the gankers, but on the whole it isn't broken. I think hisec needs more valid kill targets rather than more draconian controls.