I'm conducting a little experiment and I want to know what the community views as a gank. What is your definition of a gank? What constitutes as a gank?
Please PM me your thoughts. This thread will open once enough time has passed to get some responses. I don't want the answers of some to influence others. Even if you are not a PVP'er, I want to know your take. Write as much or as little as you like. Thank you!
It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.
In ye olden days, it meant hitting an enemy with such overwhelming numbers they stood no chance of winning. Nowadays, some people use it to mean an unfair fight in general (hence the "ganked by skill" meme). I think a lot of friction in all the different gank talks stems from this mismatch.
Personally, I think the latter is the definition of ganking we should be working with. Whether a fight was fair or not does not come down to numbers alone. Skill and ship classes used are also a factor. The problem is that judging whether a fight was fair or not is nigh on impossible outside very blatant cases. Four cruisers on three snubs is easy. But say you have four goods in snubs against eight bads in snubs, and the goods win with one casualty. Sure, by the old definition it was technically a gank, but the matchup was clearly in the goods' favour. What if they win with three casualties? What if the bads win with two people left? Three? Four? Where does a fair matchup stop and a gank begin? What if the goods are easily capable of perfecting the bads, but make a mistake and the bads get a clean sweep? Is that a gank? What do we do when it's a mixed fleet fight?
I'm not really sure how to fairly judge whether someone was ganked or not. It's certainly something staff should be doing to curb shittery, but outside of trying to holistically estimate whether the losing side was hopelessly outmatched or not, which is prone to staff making mistakes and guaranteed to make someone unhappy, I can't think of a way.
tldr ganking is complicated and not down to numbers alone
Mandatory "this is my opinion as a PLAYER, not one of devs or staff at-large" line.
Well, hopefully this doesn't set the forums on fire, but here goes.
A gank is the reason every losing side loses, if you ask them (or check their faction Discords).
I think what truly defines a "gank" is when one side completely stomps another with demonstrably negative intent (doing it multiple times, targeting one faction with anonymous ships of different factions, shadow-logging, etc.). Outside of that, I don't think the term should exist.
I don't think any side that "starts" a fight (i.e. Bounty Hunters raiding Crete) is capable of being a victim of a gank. You started the fight on purpose and now you reap the consequences. This is why in both FdM and Aegis, players are not allowed to report 1.0 ganking violations under any circumstance. Given our average player is of a higher skill level than most, the onus is on us, usually, to fight at a significant numerical and weight disadvantage. That comes with the territory of pvping in this game. The side who started the fight will usually be the one who loses in the end, given the raidlog culture that exists around fights in 2026. If you can't handle that, go to Conn.
Here is where my bias as an above-average snub player probably comes in, but the notion of skill-ganking or ace-stacking has (in my opinion) been blown out of proportion and created a lot more negatives than positives within the community. What it has resulted in is higher-skilled players avoiding playing the game as they're forced to log a side they don't want to log or sit out of fights entirely for the sake of not swinging a fight in someone's favor too much that they get reported for it. Do I think that the solution is for everyone to log one side and shit-stomp a bunch of new or lesser-skilled players? No, but just because a fight snowballs out of control or doesn't end in a 1v1 between the two worst players standing doesn't mean that it's a gank. Oftentimes, I have gone into fights where myself and multiple people were left standing with only a few regens remaining. On paper or the player list, it looks like a "gank" because one side all died and the other didn't, but in reality, the fight was a lot closer than people gave it credit for.
I often have had to play the proverbial gym coach picking out sides for a dodgeball match, which is quite unenjoyable and, in my personal view, has detracted from the overall experience of PvP and the community at large. It's made every fight stale, and turned dynamic happenings and skirmishes into pseudo-unofficial events. The notion of hand-sorting every fight before it starts, and then having to manage it constantly in the heat of a moment is a total nuisance, and led to a lot of us simply not logging outside of Conn for fights. I would imagine that given the the community's current sentiment on anyone with knowledge of snubs, I would have to guess that our lack of presence on Discovery is likely welcomed. As long as the Battlefield 6 devs don't destroy the game too much more, that's likely where we will be sitting outside of my mandatory daily Conn visit, and whatever faction duties I need to handle.
Discovery PvP has too much nuance, and the community is too small and fragmented to have a set-in-the-sand definition of "ganking" especially given how players can basically play anonymously by using throwaway indie ships or accounts. There are (almost) always two sides to every story in a given fight, especially if it's of any sort of scale, and fights often are decided within the first casualty, given how they snowball very quickly with numerical superiority. I think people should do their best to make fights as enjoyable as possible, but if that means not participating in any fight that looks even marginally unbalanced, I don't want any part of it.
End rant. If people wanna debate with me in DMs they're welcome to do so. I don't wanna clog forums with stuff relating to this, but I figured I would weigh in on it.
I think I agree with the fact that gank certainly makes more sense if you're talking about specifically targeting people in a negative manner.
It's one thing if you show up with a gunboat to camp a newbie or someone in mid ship setup (see: starting starflea) and expecting them to have fun if they don't know where to escape to (even though they likely will if they know where to go, still unfun).
But I have seen both since I returned a few weeks ago and the prior times I played, some people logging specifically to join a fight that's in progress and, for an arbitrary understanding of 'fair' becomes not so the moment 3 more snubs starts shooting on you. It does suck the willingness for some people to go places where they might run into people if the risk isn't just a /1 /2 fight but a guaranteed pvp death by a thousand cuts.
That said: I consider, at least from a viewpoint of what's less likely to make people stop playing aka avoiding a gank: +/- 1-2 players (depending on how many are in the fight) variance in favour of either team feels 'fair' even if the skill level is uneven. We're a roleplaying community so if I, as the losing, outnumbered side, felt like I had an option to at least roleplay my way out of the fight OR am given an option where I can at least see myself winning, ignoring whether I know the players outclass me or not, then a defeat isn't going to make me just drop the game for a week or more out of frustration. now, I'm likely quite 'chill' about defeat so my measuring stick is different, as with everyone and we can't really adjust for that.
But that's the thing, people will be frustrated, but will they be:
1) frustrated because they don't know anything about piloting a transport and fighting in turret view
or
2) frustrated because they came out of a jumpgate/jumphole into squad that outclasses in firepower (all things being equal but number of guns) them who send them back 20 minutes of fly time with no profit on their dinky little freighter because they entered a more or less neutral system?
Kind of extreme but yeah, if you're flying around in a squad, you're looking for encounters, if you then pick a fight it's more or less on you (the squad) to make sure your behaviour doesn't make people give up on the game (especially the newbies but harder to divine who is or who isn't).
It would also help then, that the defenders don't bring like, 2x players (has happened to all of us, on occasion) just to continuously gun down a group, but if it's spread out, then I'd say it's the aggressor's move to stay there.
Basically everyone has a choice, any fight even if they're a little bit uneven isn't really grounds for calling it a gank until every available player drops their stuff to go pewpew and -that- fight ends up massively skewed (raidlogging to the extreme, rather than just backup)
But yeah this is one of those things that's harder to gauge if we start taking into account skill levels, especially since it's an inherent risk in playing the game.
Not super helpful but TL;DR:
I think ganking is only ganking if you do it in a way that is pretty much guaranteed to ruin someone's time because it'll feel like you're going out of your way to kick them while they're down.
Someone being salty just for a loss in a situation where they could have a shot is not the same thing.
But it's also very much an opinion thing. So I understand why there's a push to try and tone it down a little at times/regulate it for the sake of player retention.
That's my angle though.
There'll never be a way to make any moderation on it pleasing to everyone but personally I think as long as I get more interactions I don't mind stopping and chatting (and maybe getting blasted to bits) as long as I don't run into /1 /2 memers hitting my crummy 3.6k ship with 3+ snubs at the same time. Like sure, there's a draw for PvP inRP for a lot of people but if that's how everything plays out each time, people are going to take longer and longer breaks.
So while I don't think logging to rebalance a fight should happen, it's also a little on the groups with the (clear) advantage to make sure they don't kick players too hard if they still want to have people to interact with- that's just sensible.
For the same If disco was real and the pirates managed to pirate everything in a region with abandon and no trader made a profit, they'd no longer have traders run through their zones. Or there'd be no more traders. Basically as a tip: "don't over exploit your farmland"
That got a bit long so I'll shut up now. xD
One of these days, there will be a clever, stylish and/or funny signature here.
This is still not that day, however.
don't know why you guys worry about it, today i'm in a miner and a destroyer and bomber show up to pirate me........it's just the way it goes. your in a good combat craft it's only normal to get as much help as u can .....besides a gank would make it quick LOL
In my eyes, If you die in a fight and the main reason you're frusturated is because they had a numbers advantage and you couldn't do anything about it, then its a gank. My most unpleasant fights were when I was outnumbered and I died like a dog, couldn't even take somebody out with me or run away.
(01-05-2026, 11:08 AM)ceu Wrote: In my eyes, If you die in a fight and the main reason you're frusturated is because they had a numbers advantage and you couldn't do anything about it, then its a gank. My most unpleasant fights were when I was outnumbered and I died like a dog, couldn't even take somebody out with me or run away.
It's not your fault,
it's the group's fault.
They might challenge you to a duel.
And if you win the first one, you can try to take out the next one.
But shooting at the same target together is nonsense and only shows personal hatred.
Let me guess: Are you wearing the DTR tag during the fight?
