EVE General Discussion

After watching the most recent dev video revealing a few more tidbits about what CCP hopes to release in the Winter Expansion, I couldn't help but have my breath catch for a moment when CCP Soundwave said that they were looking at tweaking the balance of 0.0 anomalies. As a 0.0 resident in quite a few regions over the past 8 months or so (Insmother, Pure Blind, Cloud Ring/Fountain/Fade, Omist) I personally was on the side of, "Well, yeah, anomalies are an ISK faucet that should be slowed down a bit, and some space should be more valuable than other space, but from the looks of it, you're making some space completely worthless in terms of anomalies and justifying it by saying the regions with overall lower security status have other benefits (location, moon goo, whatever.) to justify it." That's the problem I had with the anomaly change in the first place. Not that the ISK faucet was being slowed way down, but more that it was being directed towards specific areas at the expense to average players in another area.

This is fine. Some space should be more valuable. To a certain point. It spurs conflict, and ships blowing up is the reason we're here. The problem isn't that we should have space that is worth more and space that is worth less depending on criteria that you're looking at (for instance, this system is crap for ratting/mining/moon goo/PI, but has great mining/moon goo/PI/ratting potential etc.) but I also think that the anomaly nerf went to far and made some space not only worth less, but worth nothing.

Having lived in Fade, Pure Blind, and Cloud Ring during the anomaly nerf, we went from being able to pay for and maintain a Military 5 and get very good ratting for about a half dozen people or so at the same time to having a grand total of three systems that had high-end anomalies in the entire region (Havens and Sanctums) only one of which actually had Sanctums. Even with a Military 5 upgrade installed and online in an iHub.

It wasn't that bad, I mean, certainly it made ratting a lot less effective for generating ISK, forcing us to look at alternative methods of making the ISKies, which was fun in it's own right. I finally had an excuse to push up those probing skills. But at the same time, the feeling of being in forsaken space that CCP had just hit with the nerf bat while the regions 10 minutes travel away got their ability to generate ISK nearly doubled... and at what seemed to be our expense.

No matter how much time, effort, and resources we put into a system that we used to call home, we couldn't ever bring it to even a shadow of some of the worst systems in another region that had inherently lower security status. There were single systems in other regions that had more high-end anomalies at any one time than our entire region as a whole at any given time.

This is not meant to be whining. This is meant to be a consideration for CCP: In your attempt create more disparity between space in order to spur conflict, I fear that you have made some space worth nothing at all. While you can justify this by saying that it has other values, you must consider that just because a system has value in one way doesn't mean people won't want to use it in another because they could if they tried hard enough. In a game that prides itself on being a player-driven world, being told that no matter how hard you work and no matter how many resources you put into a system it will never be even a tenth as useful as another system just because the game says so is frustrating.

Now, combine that with the fact that CCP Soundwave has hinted at opening up the ISK faucet a little bit back to what it previously was without altering the already standing issue of disparity between regions, the gap only widens, and what was a minor nuisance could now become a glaring problem.

TL;DR: Making some space worth more in some aspects and worth less in others is all fine and dandy. Some space is worth more because it has something cool (moons, whatever) and worth less because it doesn't have something (ratting, whatever) However, incomes from different activities often pay out to completely different places. Moons for instance often pay out primarily to corporations or alliances and secondarily to the individual player through the logistical assets that corporations and alliances provide, where as ratting for instance pays out primarily to the individual player and secondarily to corporations and alliances through taxes and fees.

At what point is the game overly impeding the average player's ability to make ISK in the way that they want regardless of how much extraordinary time and energy they are willing to spend in order to do so, and why is it that CCP is possibly looking to widen this gap that already exists when there are entire regions that are not just worth less, but worth -nothing- in some terms? Shouldn't it be possible, even if it's somewhat impractical and less efficient?

EDIT
Because my TL;DR wasn't short enough: Why buff anomalies and create an even bigger disparity between space that is already worth so little to the point it's now worth nothing to the average player?

I'm verbose. I get muted in coms a lot. That's a TL;DR for me. I'll try and make an even shorter one.

I too pricked up my ears at that point.

It seems that Greyscales failure is now complete.

Does anyone know if he was actually fired in the end?

I can relate to that, brother!

I'm curious, has an isk per hour figure ever been mentioned as a base income figure or target figure a normally skilled pilot would make in even the lowest security areas ?

Anything from CCP ? Any suggestions from the CSM . Any leaked documents that revealed it ?

Your argument seems good but without figures it is only anecdotal. A sumo wrestlers definition of a small meal is different then a fashion models.

Additional null-sec regions might be a help, add another dozen or so null-regions and watch the carnage as everyone makes a land-rush. We haven't had any new null regions since the drone regions got added (back in '07?).

But the current issue is really that there is no such thing as "too large" for a single sov-holding corp/alliance in EVE - other then the built-in limits on member counts from the corporation skills (which are very generous). There's no real limit on things like holding sov other then the logistics and the capital investment. The more you hold, the easier it is to take new ground because you can move larger blobs around. Holding sov needs to somehow get exponentially more expensive the more systems that you try to claim sov over - but I don't have a solution there.

In w-space, this is somewhat self-limiting and most corps basically only control a single system and can rarely project power into an additional w-space system efficiently.

(Hi-sec incursion profits/hr are also an issue at the moment - mostly because you can farm the vanguards non-stop and delay destroying the mothership. Changing things around so that the vanguard systems spawn fewer and fewer sites as time goes on might be enough to force a change there.)

Liked.

I'll agree, if your space sucks for ratting and is great for moon mining, you should look into moon mining. What I'm saying more importantly is that you SHOULD be able to grow oranges in Alaska if you build the proper buildings that offer the correct conditions. It's by no means practical, but it is DOABLE.

There are some activities, specifically ratting since we're talking about anomalies, in parts of 0.0 that are less efficient to the point of uselessness. In a game that in almost all other cases richly rewards risk, why is it that I can make as much money (say 10-15m a tick to be conservative) in high sec running 4s than I can in entire regions of 0.0 where I should be making more money than I could otherwise doing similar activities in high sec? It doesn't make sense to me, and Soundwave hinting at pushing the value of anomalies up a bit just seems to be widening that gap...

I guess we should wait for more clarification on these changes they want to make, but at first glance, it seems a bit... off-turning.

Better sec status space should have better rewards than poor sec status.


The current balance is that good sec status space is 'good' because the vast swaths of -0.4 to -0.0 are worthless.

Depends on who you ask. I'd like to think that anyone too scared to read a text wall either isn't interested enough in the topic, or needs to read more books... You're limited to 6000 characters after all. It can't be -that- bad. ^_^

Well, you can still make more out in 0.0 because of other activities, such as PI and running exploration sites, but if your poison of choice is ratting, you're no BETTER OFF in some regions of 0.0 than you are in high sec running 4s, which doesn't make sense to me... Or at least, I'm not seeing the sense in it.

Chain running Hubs can net you about as much as a decent level 4 hub in high sec, but the fact is that there should be a clear increase in the amount of ISK you can make in 0.0 over similar activities in high sec, and that's just not the case when the anomalies that make you money don't exist in vast expanses of 0.0, even with Military 5.

Don't even get me started on high-sec Incursion running, which is vastly more profitable than 0.0 ratting.