EVE General Discussion

There was no saving that one, sadly.

First, I want to say thank you to the CSM for putting in the time.

I fail to see how so many people have read that document and seen it as "nerf highsec". There is one sentence that says it may be one alternative option, and there is no other mention of nerfing anything even vaguely.

POSes... Yes, fix them. I have been playing for almost 4 years and have never owned a POS because I can't be bothered with the hassle. A new modular POS system is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Lastly, I am disappointed not to see any mention of WiS content from that document. You said in there that POSes are the most commonly supported iteration in Eve. It's not, what people ask for most, is iteration to WiS.

I hate to say it, but that pretty much leaves out any room for discussion, and gives us only the ability to stand at attention and shout, "Sir, Yes Sir!," while agreeing wholeheartedly with the content of that document for fear of being banned for questioning the intent behind it, the validity of it with regard to other players, (ourselves included), or the content of that document itself.

I don't agree with the CSM on this, even if I agree that this stuff needs to be done. This is not a strategy, it's a list of things some players want and most agree with. I don't see what this has to do at all, with any long term strategy for future development, which is how I understood the intent of CCP in approaching the CSM with this according to the wording documented in the document in question.

Any discussion of this is political, and if you feel strongly, it is almost certainly going to be aggressive. If something is true, or thought to be true by one party, then it is almost certainly going to be insulting to the opposing party in question. Maybe not intentionally insulting and worded to ridicule, but insulting. That's the nature of discourse, and quite often debate.

Perhaps we can look at it as a project consigned to completion and submitted to CCP without raising question about it, even though it involves us and presumes to express our opinions and interests as presented by our representatives, the Council of Stellar Management. The fact is though, no one was asked; or if they were, they were selectively asked.

That is obvious if you read any of the portions of the document that are representative of implying permissions from or agreement of the playerbase as a whole with regard to the contents of that document. I wasn't even aware of this until I saw this thread, even being an individual who spends time on these forums. How is it that they gained my permission or agreement on this, or anyone else's?

I don't disagree with the need for these changes; I simply disagree that they should be the sole focus of development for the next 2-3 years. That's 2-3 years of my life, sitting here, subscribing to this game, that I will have to wait for further development on things I am interested in aside from this, assuming it is taken as such a strategy for that term by CCP.

This is where I identify that I am not good with that, and maybe that's political, aggressive, and insulting to some, but I mean to identify it.

Ok I would like to break down what from EvE makes it to the real world news, followed by a direct breakdown of the parts of this document that are ill conceived.

First the news going to the first non-eve news site that shows up, unfortunately this is MMORPG and clicking news.

The first few pages of news includes such wonderful articles on Null

• Glenn Beck: Goonswarm a CIA Front
• The End of The Mittani Era
• The Rise and the Fall
• War Rages On
• Blood on the Snow
• The Grind

While in the same space the CSM is only mentioned

• The Silver Lining
• The End of The Mittani Era (also a CSM mention as well as a Null)
• CSM Chairman Announces Resignation, Issues Apology
• CSM Candidates Revealed
• A Truly Stellar Council

So in the last 12 months the CSM has been reported on almost as much as Null sec. There were also news on burn jita but not really a Null thing as it was done in Hi-sec and could no have occured without a hi-sec market hub.

Ok on to the document.

While I definitely agree with "An Important Note on Rebalancing: As stated above, the pace and process of ship and module rebalancing should continue. Balancing in the following examples focuses on non-ship opportunities."

I do find issue with specifically the following
"These examples center on themes and concepts widely considered by existing subscribers as significantly broken and would likely need to be spread out over two expansions/12 months."

Critical Issue: Mining and Industry

"Create new asteroids which either yield massive amounts of low-end minerals (i.e. Tritanium), or significant amounts of low-end minerals along with high-end minerals, for use with the new Group Mining mechanic. The yields of conventional asteroids should be reexamined. This will help address high sec/null sec risk vs. reward veterans are concerned with and, when taken with station upgrades, enable a 0.0 industrial environment which will draw in new players."

While the group mining mechanic sounds like a good one this will allow the larger alliances to be completely free of Hi-sec, while hindering the smaller alliances abilities to function on level ground. So much like the Tech welfare pay outs, this will allow a small number of alliances to move forward in huge bounds making the smaller ones even more vulnerable. The other part of this being a massively reduced demand to the Hi-sec markets and prices of Hi-sec minerals going into free fall.

Now while an Alliances size should matter it should not completely trump skilled pilots, but with the above plus the Tech, we will be and in some extent already are at a point where one alliance can throw an almost unlimited supply of ships at an opponent and the cost would be of little importance.

But the biggest problem I have about all this is of course the resource loss that did not occur in the last patch as their was no Null sec involved, but the preceding 5+ expansions where resources have been wasted on Null as work is constantly done without properly working out a road map for the whole of EvE but especially Null.

TiDi was a useful function but besides that how much effort has been wasted on just supers, they have been created, nerfed, altered and are now down to the point of having no clear path at all.

This document shows me that the CSM is too heavily loaded with 0.0 alliance leadership, and is totally out of touch with one of the largest subscriber bases of EVE, the casual players... we high sec carebears, with no desire to fly with goons, no desire to deal with the hassles of 0.0's afk cloakies, that got tired of the 300 member fleet conga lines around the titan.... bah

The needs of a 50 year new player are the same as those of the 21 year old new player. You could not be more wrong!


RATHER than dividing people into new players and bitter vets, CCP would do much, MUCH better to divide the player base into:

"carebears" and PVPers.
"hard core gamers" and "causal gamers"
"have a life" and "EVE is my life"
"People that want to work together to build" and "sociopaths that pull the wings of butterflies and salt snails, just to feel they have some power".


Make the game appeal to all of these players and playing styles.



"Incomes and Security Levels (Balance): A vibrant, dynamic, and accessible sovereignty system affords CCP an opportunity to finally address the risk/reward imbalance between 0.0 and empire"


Screw you CSM!!!!!!

The rewards of 0.0 are the same as high sec, because you have made your 0.0 space as safe as high sec. CCP did not drive down the value of ABC ores via game mechanic. 0.0 drove down the value of these ores by mining too many of them.

CCP had to nerf the 0.0 anoms after dominion, because 0.0 has been made so safe that people ran them 23-7 with impunity escalating ISK inflation drastically.

How are you going to create this "balance". Reduce the rewards in high sec? Drive the casual players out of the game?

Again attempt to increase the rewards of 0.0, only to see the wallets of the 0.0 nullbears cause massive ISK inflation?


"This will help address high sec/null sec risk vs. reward veterans are concerned with and"

Correction... A certain sub-section of veterans are concerned with.

CSM needs to get it through their skulls, that many, many, MANY players HAVE no interest in playing the 0.0 game. There is nothing that CCP can, not should consider doing, that will suddenly turn the hisec, casual gamer, carebears into 0.0, hard-core, flaming local with text-fallic, blobtastic, titan conga-lining, PVPers.

What one bitter vet considers "fixing the game" another giant chunk of bitter vets consider reason to, not walk, but run away from this game.

So I have a business and I have two types of customers:

Customer A has been a long time customer, mostly because they have learned how to game the system and play for free. More people contract ebola than the number of these customers leave the game each year.

Customer B actually pays me for my product. The problem is it is hard to keep Customer B for two reasons; my product is hard to learn and even harder to master. It takes time for Customer B, much like in life, to discover how they fit in. My second problem is Customer A spends alot of time telling Customer B "YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!" instead of giving Customer A the time they need.

CCP has patiently built this game into what it is. I hope they maintain their patience and objectivity.

You just made up two entire groups of people.

What you are talking about is pretty much a constant, ongoing conversation with CCP. It's something they are well aware of both our and the community's feelings on. The document we wrote was just one more piece of the overall problem.

No. The people on the CSM that aren't being an active part of the process are the ones that you never hear from, either within your alliance, on the forums, twitter, your favorite podcast, whatever. I know some folks love it when we throw each other under the bus but I really don't need to when a minimal amount of detective work allows you to answer the question yourself (if you really want to).



Actually, that is EXACTLY the point of this document. It is very much a, "We will show you ours if you will show us yours." thing. CCP needs to finalize their internal road map internally and make it public as soon as possible. Have no doubt that war drum is beating beaten loudly every day by the CSM. The community deserves to know what is or is not on the horizon.

While I can understand your hesitance not to throw people under a bus, in this case where you have stated that the document was "Unanimously supported by by the active members of the CSM", my definition of active may be different to yours as I was surprised to learn of a member of the CSMs sudden activity even though nothing has been heard from him the entire term until recently.

So in this case I will not ask you who the inactive members are but specifically what members endorsed this document?