EVE Blog Banter #9 – F**k Da Police

By mandrill | Published June 30, 2009

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Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

“Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith “WebMandrill” Neilson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?”

Read on for my contribution…

I’m going to be honest and come clean before I get into it, I didn’t put an awful lot of thought into my answer before suggesting it. I simply thought that after Ga’len’s topic of most wanted feature which banterers would like added to EVE last month, it might be interesting to consider the converse. If you could remove a mechanic from EVE what would it be?

There are almost as many different suggestions for things that players want to see removed from the game as there are players. The biggest of these is probably the Local Chat Issue, which has split the community pretty evenly between those who want it changed and those who want to keep it as it is. I’m not going to do that.

My suggestion for this topic is probably going to scandalise a lot of the Hi-sec dwellers in EVE as it will seriously affect the way they play the game. So, with defences prepared for the inevitable flames that will descend upon this post, here it is: The mechanic I would like to see removed from the game completely is CONCORD.

For those of you who don’t know, CONCORD are the NPC police force that come down like a tone of space bricks on any player who engages in unsanctioned PvP in hi-sec space (0.5 security and above). They are omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent in these systems and their god-like abilities allow them to trap and destroy any target that gets flagged for illegal activity. It is my opinion that they are overpowered, unnecessary and I would like to see them gone, or at least seriously nerfed.

CONCORD, if they are to exist at all, should behave like a real police force. They should be flawed and not omnipotent, they should have to investigate crimes and not simply appear at the very moment the crime is committed, they should be corruptible and fallible, and they should  be beatable. In short If EVE is to have a police force at all, it should be made up of the players themselves and not the cold, computer controlled machines that they are now.

So, my suggestion for the mechanic that should be removed from the game is not necessarily the entity that is CONCORD, but the fact that they are completely unstoppable, unavoidable, and computer controlled.  If players want a safe space to mine, run missions and haul cargo, then let the players create that space, if only for the sake of realism.

New Eden is a harsh universe, but having what is effectively a region of completely crime-free space is going to encourage players to stay there, meaning that they miss out on more than half of the content available in the game. Lo-sec is the playground of pirates, roaming free of consequence and preying on any hauler, miner or mission runner that comes their way. 0.0 is almost exclusively populated by the big alliances, and while it is arguably alot safer in some regions than lo-sec (as long as the said regions aren’t war-zones) you still have to go through the dreaded lo-sec to get there and be on speaking terms with the current overlords.

As it currently stands, I don’t think CONCORD is good for EVE and should go. If something needs to be engineered to replace it so be it, but I sincerely believe that something will emerge from the community to replace it, what form that something takes and the methods they use is yet to be determined, but I have no doubt that it will be as varied and unexpected as New Eden’s inhabitants.

I’m ready with my flame-proof suit, do your worst :)

Other participants in this months baters are as follows:

    1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
    2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
    3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter – It’s the Scotch
    4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
    5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, “Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!”
    6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
    7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
    8. EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
    9. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
    10. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
    11. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
    12. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
    13. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
    14. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
    15. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
    16. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
    17. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
    18. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
    19. Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
    20. Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
    21. Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
    22. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
    23. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
    24. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
    25. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
    26. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
    27. Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
    28. Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
    29. Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 – Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
    30. Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 – Do we really need to go AFK?
    31. Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
    32. Harbinger Zero, Blog Banter #9 – War Declarations & Sec Status
    33. Warp Scrammed, Blog Banter 9 – Never Too Fast
    34. Ecaf Ersa (EVE Mag), Can a Tractor Tractor a Can?
    35. Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, EVE Blog Banter #9 – Aggression timers, WTs and Stargates
    36. Mike Azariah, I don’t put much stock in it…
    37. Rettic’s Log, Blog Banter: Overview Overload
    38. A Sebiestor Scholar, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #9: Slaves
    39. Diary of a pod pilot, [OOC] EVE blog banter #9: Because of Falcon
    40. Roc’s Ramblings, Blog Banter #9 – Taking Things Slow
    41. The Gaming-Griefer, EVE Sucks, But I Love It: The Memoir of a Masochist
    42. More articles as they are posted!

      Till next time, good hunting and don’t let the reds get you down.

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      • James Shields
        We don't need CONCORD being made up of a bunch of griefers. Don't want CONCORD? Head to 0.0.

        In any game where the guards are beatable, there are no guards.
      • mandrill
        A player staffed CONCORD would only be allowed to attack legitimate targets in hi-sec, so there would be no griefing involved. CONCORD Players who attacked others willy nilly would suffer the same consequences as the legitimate targets. (possibly retain CONCORD's current abilities for dealing with such infringements)
      • David
        Player police forces in EVE would be nothing less than organized criminial gangs. What makes you think they'd bother waiting for you to commit a crime before shooting you? It would turn all of high sec into NBSI.
      • mandrill
        My personal poltics leads me to believe that real world police are nothing more than state sanctioned gangs as it is, so I see no problem with this being the case in EVE :P
      • Calando
        Sure. Make the players the police. Then we'll have corrupt forces policing hi-sec and five times the bitching that we already have.

        Simply put, your idea to remove or change CONCORD is fucking stupid and in every sense of the phrase it would break EVE Online as we know it. There, I said it.
      • mandrill
        Fine, you think my idea is stupid, but there's no need to be offensive. Keep it civil please.
      • Manasi
        I think that every action should have a consequence. SO I cannot support your idea. interesting thought tho
      • mandrill
        I'm not saying hi-sec piracy shouldn't have consequences, just that CONCORD should more accurately reflect a human organisation rather than the omniscient gods that they now are.
      • Jim Merson
        If you want to play eve without Concord then stay in lowsec or 0.0 space. Concord does not exist in either of those two places.
      • mandrill
        FYI I do generally stay in Lo-sec or 0.0, and you know what? There's no-one in 0.0. Its pretty much empty. The reason, I believe is because the risk/reward ratio is unbalanced in favour of Hi-sec. The rewards for operating solely in hi-sec and remaining near enough completely safe from attack are disproportionate to the risks you face for doing so. Economically speaking it could seriously damage the economy of EVE if the rewards were drastically altered to make lo-sec and nul-sec more tempting, so my proposal deals with the risk aspect of the equation. Making lo-sec and 0.0 more safe would ruin the game (as I said 0.0 is pretty safe as it is, as long as you're paying attention) so I propose to make hi-sec slightly more dangerous. You would still have faction police and gate guns but I believe that CONCORD, as it exists now, should either not be in the game at all or restricted to starter systems/constellations.

        Make CONCORD a faction which players can sign up with, similar to the militias of factional warfare, and they can police the fringe areas of hi-sec. This would bring some balance to the risk/reward discrepancies currently extant in New Eden and may spread players out over a wider area.

        So, to summarize:

        CONCORD as it is only in starter systems/constellations
        Players sign up as members of CONCORD
        Attacks in hi-sec (apart from starter systems) do not mean instant death at the hands of CONCORD
        Attacks in hi-sec do result in a criminal flag so that CONCORD players can hunt you down and take you out wherever in space you are, this flag expires upon the destruction of your ship/pod
      • To be honest, the only people I've heard expressing this are the griefers. "Aaaah, I can't kill newbs without getting blowed up!!" Now, I'm not saying you are a griefer, don't know you, so I can't say.

        You say that CONCORD is bad for EVE. Well, I'll tell you I disagree, the absence of CONCORD would be bad for EVE because all the people that stay in high-sec in order to minimize being popped every 5 minutes would leave the game and play something else. CCP would lose their subscription fees and that would have a detrimental effect on EVE. Making these changes wouldn't make players experience more of the universe than just high-sec, they'd just go elsewhere.

        They stay in high-sec because of the relative safety. And it is indeed only relative.

        You want to attack someone in high-sec without repurcussions? War dec them. Oh, they're in the noob corp? Well, why the hell do you want to pick on them then? You want to pick on missioners and miners without the worry of CONCORD, then go to low-sec. But you talk of low-sec as "the dreaded low-sec". How would having CONCORD be fallible and allowing griefers to avoid being killed by them not turn high-sec into such a place?

        Because if this is possible the pirates would come to high-sec and then it would be "the dreaded high-sec" as well.

        Is it "realistic" to have a perfect police force? No. But it is a game, there are a lot of things that aren't realistic in it.

        There needs to be a niche for solo players that just want to play internet spaceships or industrialist or miner. They're not safe, you can still kill them. You just have to be willing to suffer the consequences.

        I can think of one way to implement something like this that I would agree with. And that would be to make any GCC obtained in high-sec never wear off until you've been "caught" by the authorities. And then you'd be given fines (possible ship confiscation) and/or prison time in proportion to the number of non-aggressors you've killed. Prison time would mean your character was locked up and you couldn't play it for x number of days/weeks/months.

        The only way you could get caught would be to dock in a NPC station. Station guns and gate guns would still fire on you.

        The only place you'd be truly safe from CONCORD until you've paid your fines and served your sentence would be in 0.0.

        That would enable CONCORD to be fallible, corruptible, etc. but there would still be a fairly big reason for most people to not engage in wholesale griefing in high-sec.

        And it would be more "realistic" :)
      • 100-man BS fleets wouldn't get bored quick cuz they'd have too much of a good time on comms.
      • How would you deal with a 100men bs fleet camping the Jita gates ? Or a similar much traveled HUB ? That would ruin the gameplay of many players ;).
      • mandrill
        How is a 100 man BS fleet dealt with in concord free space? You go around it, you wait for them to get bored, or you get a bigger fleet. There are other markets, there are plenty of other places to sell stuff in hi-sec, the people who use Jita gave it its status as a trade hub in the first place, it wasn't designed into the game it just sort of happened. A 100 man BS fleet camping the gates would go a long way to solving the Jita problem IMO.
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