Evening all. Just wanted to get a quick post up to let you know that I’m sorry for the lack of posts lately. Since my recent break up with my girlfriend of almost 2 years, I’ve pretty much lacked any motivation to both blog and play EVE. I’ll try my best to try and get some motivation over the weekend.
Until then, you can keep up to date via my EVE twitter account, @Godlesswanderer, or my personal account, @karlgookey.
And so we have a winner (or rather, set of winners) for the first Articulated Sky blog contest and they are as follows (going in order of first place to third)!
All you three special people need to do now is head over to my Custom Graphics page, choose the graphic you want made and either leave me a comment here or contact me directly using my new Contact page.
While out on an op (well more like an uneventful trip to 0.0 and back again) with my new corporation, a few members and I were having a conversation regarding ransoms and low sec piracy. Not having been in the pirating business for a while and only ganking with my old corp, I didn’t realise how badly piracy (as a ransoming profession) had gotten. It seems that in the past year or so, the rate of pirates being paid ransoms and then blowing up the victim anyway has gone up hugely. It has gotten to the point that if someone offers a victim a ransom, their first reaction isn’t to open their wallet; but to say something along the lines of “Fuck you!”, swiftly followed by the pirate creating a cloud of dust where their ship used to be.
Now this would be all fine and dandy if a big chunk of the EVE player base didn’t use piracy as a main income source.
So this question brought me onto my next action, which was to create a forum thread in which I posted a poll asking the question you can see in the title. I later came to regret this as I forgot that in almost every thread in the Crime & Punishment forums, there’s someone that likes to insult and/or disrespect the OP. You’ll see the fella trying his hardest in the last couple pages.
As I posted the thread on Friday morning and I was staying at Heather’s Friday afternoon and onto Sunday night, I decided to leave it a few days to get a good range of results. When it came to Monday, I thought it best to leave it for a bit longer and here we are, a massive (by my standards) 470 votes later.
Before creating this poll, I had assumed that the vast majority of pirates that offer ransoms honoured them but boy was I wrong! I’d never have thought that it would turn out to be almost 50/50. The results are as follows.
I’m still quite speechless from the results. I had been thinking for months that the lack of successful ransoms had been due to people picking the wrong targets but it seems that it is because the other half of the pirating population is (either on purpose or otherwise) misusing the victim’s trust and causing ransoming pirates to lose out on a lot of income.
Below is a quote from EVE character, Mithos Victus.
A year ago this issue was just a quiet warning from the more veteran pirates in the game that the newest generation of up and coming pirates were doing it wrong, as it were. They were trying to have their cake and eat it too. Well of course, it seems like the problem has now only been further amplified by the speed nerf and gate buff.
Seems like this will become an increasingly pertinent issue as the notoriety and ability to put stock on paying ransoms and being let loose fades.
IMO the only good pirate is the pirate who either destroys at will, or not only honors ransoms but is wise enough to demand a ransom that the target is likely to pay.
I read a thread a long time ago by a very experienced pirate who said he never demanded ransom more than 50% of the worth of the ship he had snagged. Never relied on people being so concerned with the loss, or their personal attachment to their ship to pay more than the ship itself was worth. In fact, he said he would let most go if it seemed like they were a poor mark, i.e. flying a frigate or very low player age. Why waste time trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip, etc.
IMO it would be best for everyone if pirates who do not honor ransoms take a page from the book of those who do. With the recent changes, regardless of whether one adapts or not, piracy has likely become more and more of a hit and miss activity.
Maybe this is why we keep seeing more and more people flock to systems where they can pop macro haulers and farmers rather than wait on real targets that never show up or are nearly impossible to catch?
Not being a pirate, I don’t know, and I can’t really wager that most of my basic assumptions are absolutely correct, but I can tell you that the writing was on the wall for this sort of prevalent problem almost a year ago.
Why pay a ransom not only worth more than the ship you are flying, but with almost no guarantee (save the notoriety of the corporation) that you will even be let go? Absolutely no reason to pay a ransom these days unless you personally know of the corporation or individual ransoming you.
Mithos seems to have hit the nail on the head here. I’m not entirely sure how this problem can be fixed but for piracy not to decend into a free-for-all, killing any and all ships just for the killmail, I think something needs to be done.
What are your thoughts? Pirates, have you had any problems ransoming people? Non-pirates, what would you do if ransomed? Also, do you think that the ransoming system needs to be changed and if so, how?
The BBC is to announce a partnership with Apple to distribute content via the iTunes Store this Tuesday, if rumours are to be believed.
Although a deal to make the BBC’s iPlayer distribution system available to AppleTV owners was always on the cards, a deal to distribute content via iTunes changes the nature of the game somewhat. It’s highly unlikely that the content will be made freely available – as the ‘catch-up’ service on iPlayer currently is – and many people will be displeased at the thought of paying for content twice, once via the mandatory TV Licence and the again at point of purchase via iTunes.
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