the pirate price.

Can anyone be a Pirate in EVE? sure but it WILL cost you.

I have been kind of quiet on eve the last couple of weeks, this is mainly due to my lovely wife buying me the steam version of final fantasy 7 and me going on a serious nostalgia kick, but also due to me needing to do some work with my alt vespa.

Thing is being a pirate in eve is A TON of fun, it really fits almost any play time, of course the more you play the better you get (a reason I will always suck against players with more time, but it's a reality I am happy with) ,trouble is it can be an Expensive way of life. You actively put ships in danger all the time if your good or lucky you kill more than you lose but you still need to replace what you lose, and unless your a pro chances are the loot won't always cover the bills. It tends to be feast or famine.

For that reason most pirates have alts that top up their wallet. I'm no different, I have 2 alts vespa is my money maker however before she has done some mining and a bit of station trading, I did for a while consider taking her into faction warfare but I just can't get on with being prey. So I have been training her up lately to run level 4s in a raven, that is a slow tedious process.

During the time I have been training vespa I have been selling the odd plex to keep my PVP habit in ships(some players seem to look down on this however some people have time to earn more in game some earn more at work and prefer to spend their time in game doing what they enjoy, both valid options imo) Once I get Vespa sorted I may reactivate my second other account with more alts to assist in PVP and PVE.

A new bounty system for a new lowsec.

Following on from a previous post on ways to improve lowsec I have done a lot of thinking about other methods of improvement, and I keep coming back to a chicken and the egg scenario, pirates want people to fight in lowsec that are not pirates and other people don't come because the pirates want to kill them!

The solution is quite simple, the implementation isn't. We need cops..but we don't need concord.

carebare types stay away from lowsec because on the whole if they meet a pirate they will die. And PvP In lowsec means pirate or FW. We need the third option...BOUNTY HUNTERS.

do away with the silly notion of assigning a bounty player to player but let concord assign a bounty against you that is about 10% of any kill mail value, say you pop a 20 mill ship your bounty =2 mill .

Now I know your thinking this is exploitable, any bounty system will be but what if to claim it you had to have positive sec status over +1 and be registered with concord?

now we have another valid PvP option for lowsec that pays well..gives good fights and affords the soft carebears some protection, now they feel safer in some areas of low. Thus creating hunting grounds for pirates who inturn provide income for more bounty hunters.

it's still exploitable but would make lowsec the home of PvP.

"Don't fuck up what we have.."

Ok so the other night Rixx Javix, our beloved CEO was on crossing zebras with Marc Scaurus talking about lowsec and how it is nowdays and what changes they think are needed.

Firtly, as someone that has lived in lowsec for the better part of 4 years, it is LOADS better than it was, wasnt long ago I could fly 4-5 systems and see NO ONE!! at that point only pirates explorers and the odd FW dude was in lowsec, and if you stayed away from the perma camped entry systems you could spend weeks alone. now days lowsec is teeming with life... the only problem is not all of it wants to fight.

During the podcast the overall sense i got was "lowsec is better now, not perfect but don't fuck it up trying to change things", which I do understand but, I think I have a solution that would make everyone happy.

First double the LP payout in FW plexs, we need that to be a way to make people rich, because greed inspires daring.

Second, as part of the Capture procedure for the little (or big for that matter) FW plex's you need to orbit, once a enemy militia pilot enters the plex and the count down begins a Interdiction bubble is erected in the site, this could be sold in the lore as a last ditch effort by personal in the plex to hold out for reinforcements to arrive..

Lastly, and this is what will make for the most fun Any milita pilot that kills a pirate is paid the LP reward as if he had killed a enemy Militia Pilot multiplied by .5 of the pirates negitive sec status :) This would mean what ever you get paid for killing a T2 cruider for example, if it was piloted by a pirate at -10 sec status you woud get 5x as much!! this could again be justified in lore as the empires working to root out the ruthless capsuleer pirates.

Can you imagine the FW fleets roaming lowsec looking to not only engage the other side but the pirate fleets too? That atron might take a crack at the pirate in a merlin as if he wins it is a awesome payout!!

Anyone have any sparkling insights into this?

Blog banter 48

We Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 48th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page. This month’s topic is a request from CCP Sisyphus who wants to know how important is Lore in EVE Online?

“How important is ‘fluff’ in Eve online? Would eve online be the same if it were purely numbers and mechanics, or are the fictional elements important to the enjoyment of the game? Would a pure text, no reference to sci-fi or fancy names, still be an engaging game? Should CCP put more or less emphasis on immersion?”

I felt the need to contribute to the blog banter this month, I have quite a passion for this subject as I'm sure almost every blogger will. ever notice how almost every blogger try's their hand at fan fiction at some point ( with differing levels of success)? the back story in eve is vague enough to write in almost any story you could imagine but detailed enough to provide a rice emersive environment, and the best part, its constantly growing changing and evolving ..due mainly to the players. One of my favourite parts of the "templar One " novel was where mordus is describing how he came by a wreck of a revelation after quite a well known null sec battle, the players are generating the fiction and the fiction inspires us to generate more! Taking away the fiction in eve wouldn’t really hurt the game play but it would be like having a colour TV for the last 20 years then going back to black and white. Dont take away our fluff!!! Links : Roc Wieler Blog banters