EVE General Discussion

Because that's when the term was introduced. Before that, they were called nullsec cabals or blobs or NAPfests or… well… just BoB

People have always complained about how the large alliances supposedly make it impossible for the little guy to get ahead, inventing their own reasons and terminology for why this is happening. Beyond that, people have complaining about sov ever since, oh, somewhere around the time sov was introduced, and about alliances and bluelists ever since around the time bluelists were formally included in the game in the form of alliances (with bluelists).

It's just the standard “the big guy is mean” narrative that's been around since the dawn of civilisation. The blue donut is just a catchy placeholder term that does not particularly well describe what's going on, much less how it differs from all the previous iterations of NAPs.

Not a troll answer, an answer born of the poster's extreme prejudice.

PS: according to eve-search mega alliances have been "killing" eve with their "NAPfest" since 2008 http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=886838&page=1#25

who knows how much further I could go back with related terms if I cba to look

Maybe because we've come to a point where there's no real reason to invade someone else's space aside from sh*ts and giggles like what happened in Provi last week. The parts of space that are worth taking are locked down by the most powerful coalitions and would be impossible to conquer for any average alliance. The only opposing force that would be able to take them controls the other half of the impossible to take resources and thus has no reason to want the other half.

Player empires today have a responsibility to their members to provide space and infrastructure for them to use. Running a player empire is pretty much a full time job. It's not something you can just risk and have fun with because some of these alliances have been around for 10+ years and are still growing strong. No-one in such an alliance would want to see that thrown away because of some irresponsible assault on an enemy.

In a way, EVE has maybe become too serious. To a point where the price of losing is becoming so great that it's no longer worth taking a risk anymore.

This will be ignored of course because it does not fit with the original posters views lol. It's kind of funny as it shows that some people have no sense of history or context and think things/problems that have always existed are somehow "new".

It reminds me of how someone posted a link to the old forums showing that the very 1st "EVE is dying" originated in the exact same year as EVE was born lol.

I took it into consideration, more or less i wanted an open discussion on the matter, - i am the oa
But the man i just quoted there raised the biggest point, i dont care about small groups in null, i cared about them being at war and hence generating content, that search result complaint is about smalls not competing.

Argueably though, there is a real contributing factor, and thats that we've run out of places to go skill-wise. Before, every "big power"; be it BoB, -A-, the old Northern Coalition, the various forms of the Russian Block (hell, even the failed powers of the HBC and N3 focused their formation around this principle), achieved their prominence by having the most of the biggest guns, and were then toppled off their perch by a coalition of enemies who equalised or exceeded that defining strength; and since their very reputation and self-image was built on such an unstable foundation (having the most of the biggest guns), their morale was shattered when the truth was revealed, and the rats (those who were only in the biggest power because they were the biggest power) fled to the victors, cementing the new status quo.

In the past, before the true supercap apex force was formed, there was always a way for an usurper to go bigger (for example the old NC was broken up by Russian Supercap superiority and PL T3 fleets shredding the battleship fleets of the old NC), but that isn't really possible now, all the big sides have enough of the big tools that just getting more cant assure victory any more (in B-R both sides could have continued piling more ships in to the fire, the battle itself was decided in the first couple of hours, after that point it was just feeding hulls in to the flames, Asakai was the same). This is not a new arguement by the way, we have been argueing this was the obvious result for years, but were brushed off as "whining because we didn't have the most supers ourselves". Well, now we have, and we are here. Obviously I'm not advocating that we need Super-Super-Caps, that route is just cancerous and leads us to exactly the same future just a few more years down the road, but the old adage of "just bring a bigger gun" no-longer really works, so those looking to knock us off the top are going to have to think smarter.

CCP says EVE reproduce some of the most bizarre aspects of real life.

We dont have cruzades, we dont have "Guerra do Prata", we dont have "Vietnan" anymore. What we have today in real life is exactly what we have in EVE online:

Some powerful nations bullying smaller nations for natural resources and the ability to change their social and economics to the likeing of said power.

We have once big powers which were vanquished plotting among themselves to slowly take over the hegemonic position by means of cooperation and deception instead of all out wars.

We have the estabilished powers trying to change the rules in order to keep the power, which clearly is not working.

And we have a CRAPLOAD of people who says "old times were better" because old times were better FOR THEM.

This, more or less. Asking why the empires of old didn't have a blue donut is like asking why 1700-1800's Europe didn't have the EU. The conditions and the history needed to develop such a thing really didn't exist yet.

It took time for large groups to develop. It took time for them to acquire large swaths of space and the increasingly-effective armaments of warfare. While this was still happening, they were tearing chunks out of each other, and there was still room to expand.

Over time, they had more and more, and unclaimed space dried up. Once they reached a certain size and armament level, the net effect of any more territorial gains would be (relatively) small in proportion to the effort/risk involved. At this level, it makes more sense to make peace with your neighbors, as the gains from fighting them are just not worth it and not substantially better than just bluing them. As your coalition and collection of "I-win-buttons" grows larger, this becomes increasingly true.

The tendency will always be towards amalgamation unless there are specific mechanics designed to make large groups undesirable, and honestly I have no idea what those mechanics would look like.

Large groups, in the long run, pretty much always beat or absorb smaller ones. Likewise, the more you have, the lower (relatively) the effect of any rewards and the higher the risk of chasing them. If you've got 3 systems and fight to take a new one, even if you lose and get annihilated you've lost 3 systems, oh well, and if you win you've increased your holdings 25%. When you're dealing with multi-regional alliances, taking a few systems is negligible to their bottom line, yet they stand to lose a LOT if their enemy gains momentum and continues to try and rout them. It just isn't worth it for the large groups to go after each other, and even large disparities in the quality of space are not likely to change that.

Are there any breakdowns on the history of alliances in Eve during the lifetime of the game? I would be interested in reading that.