Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So i have seen many threads about how hi-sec is over-populated and low-sec is under populated. Now im not going to say what the numbers should be for dispersion, that is a design discussion for CPP. Most of these thread have been about nerfing this or buffing that, my idea is different.

Firstly a bit about me as an Eve player and how i see Eve.

1) I'm mainly now an industrialist now but over my 7 years of playing Eve i have played most game styles and played most content types. There is 2 things i have never done however, FW or incursions. So if my idea would need to accomadate these feel free to develop it further.
2) I consider Eve a PvP* game.
3) I don't want to tell other players how they should play Eve.

* I define PvP as anytime a PLAYER is competing with another PLAYER. So this includes pew pew but does not exclusively equal pew pew. So a station trader is performing PvP, as they are competing; with their market orders against other players orders.

I am going to go through my thought processes that lead to the "final" design so as to explain how i think these changes would allow CPP to control the population dispersion in Eve. So above i did not mention null-sec, well to my mind null-sec can look after itself. If the players in null-sec don't like null-sec then im sure they could change it without game mechanics needing to be changed. Many of the things people say about null-sec is player driven, No NPC ganks you at a gate when you try to enter, players do. But i don't want to get into null-sec, i have not lived there for a couple of years so i don't feel qualified.

I'm going to use mining for most of my examples but i think that this can be equally true for all resources, be that roids, station slots, agents, exploration sites to name but a few.

When i refer to players i mean active players actually doing things and interacting with other players and the world, becuase who cares if a character that is just logging in and changing skills is in Hi/Lo/Null sec, it really does not affect anyone.

First change
Reduce the size of hi-sec and turn it all into low-sec. The exact amount would need to be worked out from CPP doing a reasonable mount of data mining of player activity, but for an example lets say 1 region per faction.

Result
All Hi-Sec player would crush up and you would have less dispersion, probably not the desired result.

Second Change
Change the amount or respawn rates of resources as per true sec status. So don't nerf/buff anything a such, keep the mechanics as they are now but make the amount of things deplete if over exploited. So with the mining example lets make up some number like (again would need data mining to get what you wanted, so don't get hung up on the numbers)
1.0-0.8 roids respawn every 4 days
0.7-0.5 roids respawn every 3 days
0.4-0.2 roids respawn every 2 days
0.2-0.0 roids respawn every day
This would result in empty systems, at the moment it would be very hard to strip hi-sec of all roids, if not impossible.

Result
hi-sec players start to run out of resources to exploit so they will disperse. Well probably not, there is the problem of the game mechanism that can generate an inifite amount of resources on demand. This is of course missions. So you will get everyone complaining that there this change is killing mining, building (lack of building slots), research etc but they could move to low-sec but why should they when the mission runner don't have to.

Third change
Change mission agents so in a given time period they only offer so many missions then they tell you they nothing to offer you, come back later. This is not an amount per player this is fixed amount between all players. This way mission runners have to compete with other mission runners for missions. By controling the amount of missions available in hi-sec you can determine at what population level the returns start diminishing as you wait or have to move around for another agent (remember hi-sec is not that big at this point).

Result
As hi-sec over populates people have to move to low-sec to find things to do. Lots of people move to low-sec and they all get ganked by pirates. Again this is the first thought then as long as when you reassigned all that high sec you did not leave choke points that can be camped then maybe not. It would be the herd idea, low-sec is now huge so is there enough pirates that they could gank everyone in this massive area, probably not as they got timers to worry about stuff. So an individual may get unlucky but the population as a whole is probably fine.

That is the meat of it. There are some edge cases to consider like new player tutorial, what do you do if you being taught how to mine and the system has been stripped. I would suggest making the tutorial be a simulator, which you could implemented as a system with no gates that you get transported to and from when you do the tutorials but noone else can get there. Im sure there are many others to consider but that is why i put final in quotes at the top.

Well if you have read this far, thank you.

Feel free to Comment/Flame/Troll/Develop/Everything else people do on forums.

Edit:
Forgot to say
Conclusion
With these changes, CPP can tweek these numbers to determine how many active players hi-sec can efficienty sustain. It is then up to the players on if they stay in hi-sec and live with the ineffciency or disperse to low-sec.

Regards

knowsitall

but if you can only mine a limited number of jet cans in hi-sec before it is stripped until the next respawn time. low sec suddenly looks better once hi-sec is stripped. Even if it is mining in a none barge, say a cruiser, some ore is better than no ore, and low-sec is now huge helping you "hide".

I pretty much like all approaches. Reducing the huge area of hi-sec is a pretty good point. This could be actually step one as it results in an organical scarcity of resources. Step two could actually be the lower respawn rates of roids as well as the limited amount of missions provided to all players. From a role play perspective the limited availability of missions makes even more sense.

truth be told. if i wasn't already in null sec, and high sec ran out of astroids to pop then i'd look in to going to null sec. if i'm going to have to suffer the logistical bullshit of getting vast quantities of crap through hostile space, i may as well go to the most profitable part of hostile space 0.0. which, is ironically safer than empire for mining and you can get better boosts along with better ores. even more so with your new system of guaranteed daily respawns in 0.0.

alternatively, i'd just log in every 4th day and strip the belts and log out again and do some thing productive with my time for the other 3 days.

from a mining perspective low sec just isn't worth the hassle, even with your new system.

you're going to sacrifice concord protection and the logistical issues that come with out of empire space for 500k isk per jetcan in lowsec?

i doubt you would.

I doubt you'd get the results you want. People won't go to low sec because they are forced to, they'll just quit the game. While I'm sure some people in high sec are null alts I'm equally sure a good chunk of high sec population are people that enjoy the complexity of Eve but aren't full time PVPers. They log on for whatever it is the call fun, take some precautions to avoid being an easy target, and generally don't go looking for a fight for the majority of their play time.

You can't force a person that prefers PVE or prefers to not fight into low sec. That's not why they play and if you push them too hard they'll just find a new game that lets them play they want instead of conforming to someone else's opinion.

Low sec needs a complete overhaul on how it works and what it offers players. Immunity from super caps, ability to claim a limited portion of space, and improved resources (ore, goo, exploration sites) would go a long way to making low sec a place people want to go.

Right there. I sincerely wish people would grasp this concept yet it constantly falls on deaf null ears.

You cannot force other people to change their playstyle. It will not work. Period. People have different ideas of fun and if you take away what they find fun they'll just leave the game and go find another game that is fun for them. Any attempt to force a migration from high to null will only hurt the game's health.

No one has a problem with you wanting to improve null by itself. But these constant whines to improve null by punishing other players that don't share your playstyle is getting tiresome and undermining any support for your problems from your fellow players.

Right, and I'm sure the forums were just awash with frothing high sec players demanding null players be forced into high sec and do nothing but PVE all the time?

False equivalency aside, again, no one has a problem with null players wanting to improve null sec. They do have a problem with null players wanting to improve it by punishing other players and/or trying to force them into null. You want to play in null all the time and not have to come to high sec? I have no problem with that. You're being forced into high sec to support your chosen playstyle? Yeah, that sucks and I have no problem with you wanting to fix that.

But as long as you keep thinking you can fix it by ******* someone else over, you're not going to get much sympathy. The problem is with null itself and the attitude coming from many of the players within it.

You're sitting over there with a broken arm and proposing you can heal it by punching someone else in the crotch.

Ahh, I love it when people assume everyone doing PvE in high sec is doing it for the fun: http://www.evenews24.com/2012/03/16/expose-botwalk-empire-a-th3-untouchabl3s-insight/

What did that have to do with anything?