Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A little could happen in anomalies also, but by making it happen at moons there is also a counter pressure to the 'POS everything' attitude. Since you can't have both POS & Moon mining at the same time then.

I agree that moon mining in its current form is poor game design, never should have been added and should be deleted immediately (Surprise crious nerf please!). It should be replaced with some form of active mining, perhaps as a new rock for mining anoms in low/null. The rest of it I think misses the mark. The problem with sov in null is and always has been that it's based on structures rather than actual player presence.

My view on sov is that it should be deleted from the game entirely and replaced with nothing. Now before you rage, hear me out. Outposts would remain conquerable/buildable, there would still be cyno jammers and super cap production. I would simply decouple those things from sov. You could put them up anywhere in null you like (except npc null) but so could your enemies. The only way to keep another alliance from tossing up a jump bridge to your home system would be to actively patrol the space in and around your home system.

This would greatly change the dynamic of null sec pvp. The giant structure bashing fleets would vanish, instead there would be tons of little 5-20 ship patrols and some larger fleets hunting said patrols. You would still get large battles of course, as these patrols would run into each other and things can easily escalate thanks to titan bridges. Defending and attacking stategic POS's would also have this effect. If you live for the 2000 player lag fests, you will still get those (probably more often tbh). But you will also have far more opportunities for more tactical pvp. All of this is assuming that null sec has more than 1 coalition running it of course.

But that brings up the other advantage of this idea, in addition to far more pvp, it would also break up the mega coalitions. Yes, you could still have half of new eden set blue, but all those renters suddenly have zero incentive to pay you anything. You can camp their system, you can shoot their POS but you have no means of stopping them from simply firing off a cyno 10 jumps away and going there a few hours later after all your guys get bored.

This in turn leads to more conflict still, which everyone except the hardest core carebears would love I think. As an added benefit, it would steeply curb the SRP programs everyone is running. So there is that too for the OP.

Yes, but if you recall, the static anoms were PvP hotspots since everyone knew they were there and that people ran them, so went hunting the runners. Which means we have turned Moon Minerals into a content & conflict creator since there will be ships at risk in space.

I'm not against random anomalies as well, but if moon mining is entirely removed then that removes a significant reason to bother holding space. While I feel we should be encouraging and rewarding holding space provided you actually put pilots out in that space as well to make you money.

Simple. Cynos cannot light within 100km of a station.

Think about it.

I don't see SRP as a problem as it encourages pilots to fly. What puts me off sov null is the fact that you have to join one of the existing alliances for any viable attempt at creating your own space. However creating your own space under sufferance of a greater power isn't independence. It's more akin to the client kingdoms the Romans set up in Britain. The tribes were in charge of their territory as long as the Romans told them they were, and that is how soc null appears to me now.

Rather than sov being governed by structures with payments made to CONCORD I would rather see a more dynamic system whereby you control a system by controlling all gates leading to that system. This would possibly be by some extension of the FW style play, or player built but relatively squishy plexes providing gate control. There would also need to be some means of stopping ships bridging directly into a controlled system (since bridges use WH's then a structure that can crash a non-natural WH as it opens should be possible due to its inherent instability). This would lead to large fights at gates across multiple systems (spreads TiDi) desperate attempts to forms bridgeheads, even more desperate attempts at defence etc.

This could at least give a new small alliance the opportunity to grab a chunk of space and have a hope of holding it with enough corpies. I for one would be more inclined to try that than simply bow before one of the existing entities. The only option for me right now is as a privateer sneaking in or for a small fleet to roam through trying to bring anarchy for the sake if it (not unappealing :D ).

No, it'd lead to one side setting up on one side of the gate at their optimal range, the other side doing the same, a couple of scouts dying and everyone else going home. Jumping into a defender who is all set up nicely and waiting to blap you the second you decloak is never going to end well, especially if you can't scatter them with a bomber wing or four you bridged in beforehand.

I see where are you going with this and i like the general drift of your idea. Make battle fatigue (as no more ships to fly) and resource denial something meaningful. I believe that i've encountered that similar discussion in another MMO that has been making attempts to differentiate itself from the inconsequential fighting and are currently revamping their resource system to make fatigue occur faster and in more logical locations.

I believe that it's not allowed to discuss another games here, so i'll just mention its an MMO FPS and let you figure which one it is. But what are they doing is to restrict passive resource gain in locations where it makes sense resources will get depleted.. They use a lot more gamy mechanic that does not apply to the complex economy and resource flow of EVE. Yet those guys had that same idea you have - fatigue and interdiction are something really important in braking a stalemate.

Now, little nitpicking! The title you chose is not particularly.. appropriate, as SRPs are a corporation policy and emergent game play that can't be restricted. And it should be clear from the title that you are really discussing some of the basic of EVE online economy.

P.S. Also, as an average student playing as a highsec carebear, manufacturing and trading stuff to make ISK to PLEX his account, i know what you mean when you say that loosing a ship should hurt. I've played under the "don't fly it if you can't replace it" moto since i first touched EVE. And i believe that even the most influential entities SHOULD be susceptible to being damaged by actions on a scale, smaller than alliance infiltration and disbanding. For how long did the consequences of the large battles of late winter lasted? I see only HERO moving in en masse being any major shift in null... and this was not because the two major forces lost between themselves a ton of capital and supercapital ships, which likely got replaced within a month... and life went on.

Ban corporations giving cash to player characters...?

Oh, people don't like what the coalitions do... I see

This is a really well-reasoned post. You are correct that most people are essentially selfish cowards who have to be coaxed or coerced into taking action or accepting risk on behalf of a larger group. We see this in our society today, where despite the fact that the U.S. has been at war for nearly 13 years, less than 1% of the population has served. Within that 1% an even smaller percentage has been in actual combat. Those of us who have been there, however, know that it can be an exciting, terrifying, addicting feeling. There is nothing like the thrill of working alongside your brothers and putting your lives on the line, particularly if you believe in a cause. My Marines get so addicted to that feeling that many of them want to go back to horrible places like Afghanistan or Iraq. Others seek to mimic that feeling by riding motorcycles 120mph on I-5 or doing lines of coke off a hooker's ass.

To me, Eve has the potential to mimic that feeling. Eve can be about working alongside your brothers, putting your virtual assets and lives on the line, to achieve a common goal or further a cause you believe in. Will that work for everyone? Of course not. Some just want to blow **** up and cause mayhem. That's fine too, but how much mayhem are you really causing if you are not actually destroying anything? If you get your thrills from kicking over another kid's sand castle, how much would you like it if every time you did it, they instantly had a new sand castle? Eve needs valuable items at risk to appeal to the psychopaths just as much as it does to appeal to the empire builders, industrialists, explorers, and everyone else who make up Eve.

You brought up gambling, which I think is very appropriate. So, certainly that 1% of Americans who volunteered for our military represent people who are willing to make the ultimate gamble. Without getting into politics, more Americans might have been willing to make that gamble if they believed in the narrative (as in WW II). Believing in the narrative is important - we have seen how events such as the T20 scandal provided a rallying cry for the anti-BOB forces (whether it was the equivalent of "Remember the Maine!" or "Remember Pearl Harbor" depends on your perspective). Or consider the spark that Mittani's scandal at Fanfest had, for both sides.

So, one thing we could do to improve Eve is to improve the narrative. Give people a reason to care about what happens in Eve. Give them an other to hate. Both CFC and the grrr Goons crowd have been decent at this historically, but the Botlord agreement has killed that narrative. It made sense for me to hate the elitist cheaters in BOB seven years ago, just as it made sense for the other side to hate the immature emotional terrorist scammers from the Something Awful forums.

Today, the narrative has broken down, because the coalitions are basically the same. Both sides have vast wealth from moons and renters. Both sides have vast capital and supercapital fleets. Both sides AFK-cloak in each other's systems. Both sides suicide gank in highsec. Both sides practice warfare by seeking to crush the morale of the opposing side, whether by covert attacks on C2 systems, director-level spies, blue-balling, hell-camping, etc.

Eve in the current iteration is Animal Farm at the end of the book...

So, in the absence of narrative, we are left purely with gambling and cool explosions.

The loss of internet space pixels will never match the emotions from putting your life on the line for your brothers, but it does essentially require you to place a sizable bet. Why do people go to Las Vegas? Some go from the naive belief that they may strike it rich. Most, however, go to be entertained. Putting money on the table, whether it is a bet on the outcome of a game (Las Vegas's largest revenue stream is sports gambling), hoping to make black jack, or throwing dice, is exciting. Las Vegas doesn't really have a narrative, but it does have thrills for all your senses.

Eve is a game. Games are supposed to be entertaining. We are entertained by thrilling events. Putting our lives or our money at risk is thrilling.

SRP takes the thrill away from the game, especially when the ISK behind it is produced passively. That ISK represents a value only that other people are willing to attach to it - it does not represent hours of labor or any investment of time. So what value do people place on ISK? A lot less than they used to...

One could look at the current PLEX price and see that Eve is much less exciting now than it was a few years ago. People are no longer willing to invest real time and money in Eve. Where is the Russian tycoon who spent $100,000 on Eve? A few years ago $20 bought you only 250m ISK. Today, it buys you 750m ISK. Yes, it is it easier to make ISK today, but the number of people who are willing to convert real dollars into ISK to get enjoyment out of Eve is much lower than the number of people who are only willing to maintain Eve accounts as long as it does not cost them real money.

Eve needs a new narrative and it needs to give value to ISK again. Cutting out the passive income gain will help with the second part. It is also one step on the path to opening up space to the have nots of Eve, thereby enabling new narratives to begin.

As I said, it is not the whole solution, but it is part of it.

The main issue comes from the static nature of sovreignty, not from SRP, neither from renting programs. Passive income is a direct consequence of the easiness to keep sovs after they have been taken. Moon mining requires a POS to be anchored and then the sov, same for renting programs. Without sov, there is no income, no income no SRP, no renters.

So my opinion is that every problem the OP is talking about can be solved by a deep change in sov mechanism and especially in the way sov are kept/maintained. Any alliance with a large cap fleet and a good cyno chain can field caps to prevent any attempt of sov capturing from another entity. This situation encourages big blocks to be formed and people to sit into station waiting for a ping.

Furthermore, capturing a sov is a long process that requires a lot to be done from the agressor part. Sovreignties should be quite hard to catch but even harder to preserve (like in the real life). Sovreignity should be something fluctuant and it shoud be easier for an agressor to capture a system when its sov indicator is low. Even pirates NPC factions should be able to take down sovs on systems from alliances that are not populating them enough. Incursions in null-sec have always been considered as a boring thing that should be avoided by NS pilots to prevent their ships from destruction. My opinion is that incursions should have a political impact into the region where they occur. For instance the sov cursor of every system in a constellation could be lowering every day an incursion lasts, until the sov is lost. The only way to prevent it for an alliance is to chase pirates out and not only wait after them to get away.

The aim for CCP should be to encourage people to undock as often as possible to fight to maintain their sov, because a sov should be a living thing, with accidents, disorders, rebellions, etc. A sovreignty is based on infrastructures that have been deployed in space. Every infrastructure, machine can break down and have to be repaired. Give the null sec a living nature with disturbing events, things to do and people won't be spinning in stations waiting a FC to log on. Roamers will come back to attack the fleet trying to repair its deficient cloning service. An asteroïd collision has damaged a POS ? Caps have to be fielded to repair it. A huge wormhole has appeared in the middle of your space, leading straight into another Null sec ? A large fleet needs to collapse it, A stargate has been desynchronized, we need a special instrument to be crafted to realign it...and so on.

Ships have to be in space every day to keep the space under the control of their alliance and to allow them to exploit moons, belts, anomalies. I am sure that NS pilots would enjoy having a wide variety of things to do to participate to their alliance life, not only bash structures and farm anoms. It would also prevent huge blocks like CFC to hold half of the donut, because every long deployment will have a strong impact on their sovreignity level of the land they left.