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serious security
reported by CCP Fear | 2008.08.06 02:58:31 | NEW | Comments

We have been looking at suicide ganking and overall security standing issues, and how these features affect the general landscape of EVE. We are not happy with the current ease of suicide ganking and the relative "no hassle" it has become. In many cases, unsuspecting victims have no chance to escape , nor any help from CONCORD. We want to change this.

CONCORD

CONCORD has some issues, mostly that pilots are killed long before CONCORD arrives. We have decreased the response time, meaning they will arrive quicker, and we should see a more helpful CONCORD aiding those in need.

We also changed the functionality and reduced the spawn. CONCORD now spawns in groups of 3 ships: 2 frigate sized vessels, which will lock the aggressor down in place, and a heavy hitting battleship to reduce his or her ship to metal scraps. The frigates will lock almost instantly while the battleship takes longer to lock, and the aggressor is made more aware of his or her impending doom.

Security penalties

Since the beginning of EVE, security penalties have been flat throughout every region of space (excluding 0.0). It has basically meant that the "security level" of a system means nothing, as the same penalty goes in all spaces. Although CONCORD has faster response times in the higher securities, it has not changed the fact that penalties are the same.

Through our research, we discovered that the balance between gaining standing and losing it was not in line with our intentions. It is too easy to gain back lost standing, taking only a few days to erase all the damage done by ganking. This is about to change.

We are increasing the security penalties throughout high-security space. It will be a gradual change, from 1.0 down to 0.1, where the security level of the system will dictate how much penalty you receive for illegal actions against a fellow capsuleer. This means that 1.0 will now be the safest of places, where aggressions and kills will be severely penalized and can quickly outlaw the aggressor from higher security levels. Conversely, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 will see a decrease in penalty, but not a big step down. This should move most ganking to the lower security areas where it belongs.

CONCORD will always frown on pod killing, thus the lowest penalty will not go below its current, which is a 12.5% standing loss. It is still possible to pod kill in high-security areas, and of course those at war or in 0.0 won't be affected.

The changes to security standings will make it harder for players to casually gank another player, and creates a challenge, so that if you are going to kill someone, you better realize the consequences.

Note that the security penalty uses the actual security rating of a system. A system listed with a 0.5 rating, for example, can actually range from 0.45 to 0.54. This means that the penalty can vary from system to system, so don't be surprised if you notice a varied security penalty in similarly rated systems.

Player vs. Player standing penalty

We will also count the standings of the two players involved; this extra variable can affect the total penalty received by a few percent. For example, if an aggressor has a high standing, and the victim negative standing, the aggressor get less of a penalty hit. This works in reverse, too. If you have low and the victim high, you will get an increased penalty.

As it currently stands, every whole point of standing difference will increase or decrease the penalty by 1%. If the aggressor has +5 and the victim -4, the overall penalty would be reduced by 9% (and increased if the other way around).

This is, of course, a major change in the landscape of EVE, but we are confident that these changes and the future plans will make EVE a better experience for everyone.

But what for the future?

We have a taskforce (Named TaskForce Doughnut!) which is dedicated to looking over these changes and proposing plans for the future. We have already started work on the above, but the future holds more changes.

In addition, the highly requested feature of removal of insurance in CONCORD related events will be implemented in the near future.

The CONCORD changes and Security penalty will be hitting TQ this fall, with Empyrean Age 1.1.
Be safe out there!

CCP Fear

Because of these types of changes there actually was a "Crime & Punishment Suicide Gank Someone" day on July 26. If they go forward with this we shoul protest by doing lots of suicide ganking before the changes go live.