Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Eve players make terrible game designers and i don't want to pretend to be any different. I simply wish to voice my opinions, receive feedback on them and hear those of others.


Exponential sovereignty costs

One of the most commonly expressed issues with the current nullsec is the fact that most of it is owned by only a handful of extremely large entities. Exponential sov costs, which would rapidly rise as the number of controlled systems rises, could be a very simple yet effective solution. Even a small alliance starting out could very easily afford a single constellation with a multitude of upgrades, whereas even the largest alliances would face crippling financial problems trying to take more than 6-8 constellations. Really the only counterargument i can personally think of is that it would limit massive space empires and therefore disrupt the sandbox nature of Eve. This is of course a valid concern, however consider the fact that sov costs already exist. Consider also what is their intended purpose game mechanics wise, and is it fulfilled? In the end i also feel that these massive space empires are detrimental to gameplay and sacrificing a bucketful from the proverbial sandbox would be an acceptable price to pay for an overall better gameplay.


The contrast between the alliance and the pet

In my mind another big problem in today's 0.0 is the often rather vague line between different alliances. In many cases the pet shares nearly all benefits with their masters. Let's think of a scenario where a player wishes to join a certain prominent group in nullsec. Even if they are rejected by alliance A they still have B, C, D, and E to choose from, all of whom have access to the same space, infrastructure, and fleets. In my opinion a player should want to be part of a certain alliance, over being blue to them. This also allows players to be divided into several smaller alliances all blue to each other in order to circumvent the aforementioned exponential sov costs. So what are the benefits of 0.0 sovereignty to the average player? Jump bridges, cyno beacons, cyno jammers, ratting and mining upgrades, stations, research and manufacturing facilities, POS fuel usage reduction and more. Some of these benefits are already restricted to the alliance, but most of them remain available allies. I think many of these benefits should be restricted to the alliance, the implementation of which brings me to my next subject.


Sovereignty upgrades and the constellation

The current state of the sov upgrades leaves much to be desired. As i see it a lot more of the upgrades should benefit only the alliance that owns them. Also claimed, but unupgraded system should penalize many of these things. For example bounties, moon mining and mining yields could be reduced to perhaps 20% of the current, but through sov upgrades be brought back up to say 125%. This would effectively put a stop to all of these activities in anyone else's space, while leaving NPC-space and such activities as ninja spawn and complex hunting mostly unaffected. The availability as well as most importantly the effectiveness of the upgrades should be tied less to sovereignty levels, and more to constellation control. The aforementioned 25% boost over the current state of affairs could then only be achieved by having not only the highest upgrades, but also control over the entire constellation. This should of course again be exponential so that the last system in the constellation would count for as much as 30% of the effectiveness of the upgrades. This way alliances would really want to control the entire constellation, instead of just individual technetium systems here and there. Strategic upgrades such as jump bridges, cyno beacons and cyno jammers should also require certain amount of constellation control in addition to the length occupation. Perhaps above 50% for jump bridges and cyno beacons and 75% for cyno jammers. Both the costs and accessibility of the upgrades should be improved though, most importantly by making them smaller in actual volume.


The fight for resources

Even with all of these changes there would still be plenty of space to go around when a single constellation can support many dozen people. Therefore i think each system should be able to support fewer people at once, however all systems should be decent for income with certain few constellations, one or two per region, being much better than the rest. If only one alliance could take advantage of a constellation at once, and they couldn't each support a thousand players, the stronger alliances would of course take the more lucrative space. This could create jealousy, which in turn would create fighting over resources and drive the game.

I disagree with most of your ideas!

1.) Exponential Sov costs can easily be bypassed by blue coalitions... which is what the "major" entities in EvE are now... Besides, why do you want to limit the amount of space a Single Alliance owns? Instead, you should be focusing on mechanics that make large alliances VULNERABLE when they overextend!!

--- Think more like a sustained activity cost to sov, where the Sov Level of space diminishes when it is NOT used. Perhaps even increase the sov cost for owning underutilized space.

2.) You keep speaking of limiting the use of space to alliance members only.... Reducing mining yields and bounties to 20% of their original value for non-alliance members? Really?? And you don't think this will hurt ninja plexers? Have you ever completed a plex escalation? You know, the escalations that send you 8-16 jumps into enemy territory, but offer high bounty rats that drop faction/deadspace/officer modules.... In your world, all of these just got their bounties nerfed by 80% because they almost ALWAYS send you into enemy territory. There are many other problems here too... but to put it frank... NO!

Cyno beacons and POS fuel usage bonuses are already available to Alliance only.
Cyno Jammers, ratting, and mining upgrades are benefits to the system, not a player. Leave it as is!
Jump Bridges are available to anyone with the password. (I don't care if you limit this, but you'll hear uproars for doing so).
Stations (including their S&I facilities) are available to whomever the station owner decrees. Leave it as is!

Having 3rd parties benefit from system upgrades and Stations is not a bad thing, so why limit it to alliance only?

3.) You talk about reducing the density of players.... This is a TERRIBLE idea. We want raiders in game, and raiders don't just want ganks, they want fights! If you spread out the population, then the owners will have a hard time of organizing a counter response. If a 5 man gang comes through, and there's only 2 ratters in a system... they hide.... if there are 10 ratters in a system, they are far more likely to ship for PvP and fight... Increasing Population Density increases PvP potential, and that's 100% a GOOD thing... Additionally, if more players are packed into a few systems, that means there are less somewhere else, ideally creating available systems for the taking!

4.) Fighting for resources is a good thing, but have you really looked at the distribution of resources in nullsec? The main resources utilized in nullsec are moongoo and bounties. Bounties, which help the average-joe member of an alliance, are ubiquitously available. The anomaly upgrades, while it diminishes "fighting" over low-truesec systems, increases PvP because average-joe can afford to lose ships. The anomaly/mining upgrades are actually well thought out, because they give benefits to alliance members who are active in a system. Without these upgrades, the profitability of nullsec is way below that of highsec, which is just bad! In contrast, moongoo is an alliance-level resource that typically benefits the alliance, and not it's members (although some alliances utilize moongoo profits to help members with ship reimbursement, etc). Fights happen over moongoo, and that's the primary form of resource fighting. This is problematic, because the average joe can't usurp that resource, as its EHP/Defenses make it a fleet activity. To sum up, I agree there should be more resource fighting, but don't do it by eliminating resources to non-alliance members. Instead, think of farms and fields and mechanics that average-joe can utilize or raid for profit. Then you'll have real resource fighting!

-- An example: The Moon Harvester Deflector. This device allows someone to steal moongoo from a moon harvesting operation. The reason this is good, is that it is small gang oriented (easy to deploy, easy to destroy), it doesn't eliminate nor destroy the moon harvesting operation, it provides a reward to the raider when the locals don't react, and it encourages but doesn't demand the defender to fight back. Unfortunately, there are very few passive farms and fields in EvE (Moon harvesting, datacore farming, and PI extraction are it).

4.) Destructable Outposts are a good thing, and I do like the idea of having a structure that can be "rebuilt". I think outposts should drop "loot" when destroyed, and I think you should lose "some" of your in-station goods as dropped loot. I also think it's a good idea for the majority of your goods to be recoverable if the station gets rebuilt. Perhaps you should only lose 10% of your items/ships when a station is destroyed, and half of those drop as loot. This way, you don't lose everything, but you still lose a significant amount.

Some concepts I feel are missing from your post, but are important in nullsec redesign:

The Sov Conquering System is broken. There are no small gang targets, there is no benefit for sustained system activity, there is no potential for guerrilla warfare in the Sov system. In EvE, rebels NEVER win the sov game, and Gaddafi, with superior weapons and numbers, crushes any resistance because the rebels can't defend a building. All SOV conflict centers entirely around big targets, requiring big fleets, that predictably happen on a timer, and when you can't stand toe to toe against your oppoennt, you lose. This is bad!

While blobs suck, coalitions are not all bad. All it takes is one ambitious member to assassinate an Archduke Ferdinand, and suddenly the whole universe is at war.

There needs to be more small gang targets in general. Ratters are nice, but there should also be small targets that encourage spontaneous defense fleets!

Inevitably, our game play reflects who we are.

We are social, so we organize into groups.

Some might call it lazy, but we try to be efficient. Min Maxing fits on PvE ships, and attempts to do this with PvP fits show this.
As does taking advantage of any game mechanic not expressly forbidden to us.

We want the respect of our peers, and enjoy being popular.

The way we play EVE embodies these attitudes.

Min Maxing game mechanics in null space also reflects this.
The rules need to reflect the base requirements, since we keep showing we will find them and use them to suit our needs.