EVE General Discussion

Someone explain to me how that is not a broken mechanic.

I don't mean the meta-drama.

Goonies gonna goon. Jade is gonna tinfoil. The Mittani gonna be Space Dr. House (yeah, went there).

But I expect the company that I spend hundreds of dollars (if not thousands) a year supporting, to not punch in their responsibilities and deliver a quality product of endless possibility of entertainment.

The way I see it, a sandbox world in which mercs are a profession should be about escalation and epicness and death and destruction no matter what sec. It should be about unexpected, unscripted, unplanned, surprises. About ingenuity and cunning and creativity over math and scripts played out time and time again.

Having to pay trillions of isk to get epicness in wars is breaking that. All it promotes is defensive carebearing - sitting in stations why your alts do the work elsewhere. It denies fun to the attacker, and it denies fun to the defender. It makes for a boring game.

I am not saying there should be fairness. Quite the contrary. I am saying there should be freedom. Freedom can be unfair.

There should be the freedom to call upon dozens of corporations to engage in protracted battles of epic proportions if that is the way the involved want to take it. Attackers should be cunning and finds way to counter this (such as bribes, spies etc). There should be financial risk for both sides.

So I do not understand why would it make sense to essentially have a linear wardec fee with a cap, but then have a logarithmic merc hiring fee with no cap. I just try to find a reason. "Eve is not fair" doesn't make sense, to me, as reason.

EVE is not fair is true and should remain true.

Eve is not fun shouldn't be.

I think CCP if forgetting this is a game and not a cult formed around the vision of self-styled prophets imposing their vision of sandbox instead of actually building one.

I want tools to play in the sand. They can be hard tools to master. They can unfair tools. But make them result in fun.

Not premade castles with the same outcome every time its is played. Boooring.

That is turning wardec and mercenary roles into a boring PVE mission. That is unacceptable. So stop punching it in and start actually using your brains CCP. This sandbox is not just griefers and carebears.

Also you can be brilliant - TiDi and the new mining stuff shows you can get it right when you want to. So don't punch this one in. Really create a vibrant hisec merc role. I mean, why not introduce hisec semi-sov for merc alliances? You worry about complacent carebear, do

However, some kudos to CCP for putting the fire under the meta-drama. It beats Game of Trones in the guilty pleasure soap opera category... I see what you did there -.-

Doesn't require 1 isk to defend, you can either bring in corporations into your alliance or - get this - actually defend yourselves using combat ships and stuff..
hope that helped

o7 o7

Or, you can leave a docked holder and drop temporarily to another corp/npc corp.

Ah yes, the NPC Corp.

A popular choice, I understand.

5000 goons can succeed against 3 miners without mercs? You don't say...

If goons like the Jita camp, they wouldn't be crying to nerf it.

If goons are that smart, they wouldn't be goons.

I find it ironic that the most virulent and nasty post here has been from someone against the goons, wereas the one goon who posted was simply 2/10 trolling.

Who are the evil ones?

However, I want to refocus because as usual people turn this thread away from what it is about.

The concern is not even about "balancing" - that is red herring quite frankly - its about the tools we need in the sandbox. Having a tool cost trillions of isk is effectively limiting this tool. It is closing off an avenue of play in the sandbox.

It is not about fairness - like CCP Soundwave wants to Jedi Mind Trick us into thinking, and Jade plays useful fool to - but about having a tool. If I want 20 allies, I should be prepared to back that up, there should be a cost. But a trillion and more isk is not a cost. It is a prohibition.

Its like when they first banned weed in the USA, they technically didn't, they simply required a stamp be bought per bushel, but this stamp was not available for sale. It is banning by other means. That breaks the entire purpose of having allies. I rather go back to the old system then, this is feature is useless if one cannot play with it and push its limits.

And I would like to hear what CCP has to say. This deep involvement of CCP public staff in the metagame is keeping them from addressing concerns of their customer base. Not a good business model.

CCP Soundwave needs to behave less as player and more as a professional business representative of CCP and a key stakeholder in providing customers value in the form of tools for the sandbox.

Nothing's stopping you from bringing your "allies" into a mutual alliance. Or having your allies pony up the cash and wardec the aggressors themselves. Or any number of methods that involve actual allies, and not just highsec ganker corps who merely want cost-effective workarounds around having to pay a wardec fee themselves (which I imagine is what you actually want).