Assembly Hall

This is a great thread.

I know I've been conditioned as a young player to not trust anything with "goon" as a prefix - but from reading this thread I have new found respect for the OP.

This idea seems pretty out there - but what about the idea that players, through large cooperative actions, could CHANGE the security status of certain areas.

i.e. Through a concord directed set of objectives, a section could move from 0.4 to 0.5.

The reverse could also be true - by connecting with pirate groups, a system could be moved from 0.5 to 0.4.

Agreed -- Null already has the best ISK in the game ... yet only a minority of players live there ... isk is not their main concern ... they're looking for adventure ....

Find a way to actually ATTRACT players to nullsec, rather than trying to force them there ... forcing will only result in lost subs.

At the end of the day, most players simply aren't attracted by 24x7 pvp living under the thumb of some large powerbloc ... that level of politicking and (for average pilots) isk loss is simply never going to be "fun" for most players .... your average joe already slaves away 12 hrs a day working under someone's thumb or feeling bullied by people with more money than they can ever hope to have ... why play a game (nullsec) that's just more of the same? Sure it's great for those on top ... but most people by definition will never be on top.

Nullsec alliances are great - they have their critical place in the large backdrop of EVE ... but what will attract and keep "average" players, are new types of gameplay and new territories, made more ACCESSIBLE to a lower experienced / less pvp skilled class of pilot.

The nullsec elite can denigrate this all they like, but should realize that it's this huge bulk of more average / armchair players that are needed to feed the CCP subscription engine so we can keep EVE alive. If you want them to stay and keep paying, you've got to give them a reason .... and they've already told us (by not living in nullsec) that nullsec life, is not very attractive ....

No it doesn't. What makes sense is that there is more profit in null and low moongoop. There is nothing stopping CCP from having a new set of moongoops that can be found in high sec that are all new and take none of the profit from null or low sec.

What doesn't make sense is keeping moongoop and moon operations a mystery to those that would like to try it out, and then perhaps grow into low and null sec operations. Having something in high sec to fight over, moons, planets, resources, may be just what high sec needs and may be just the right level of "training ground" that encourages more people to PVP, learn the ropes in "saftey" and then go out into the big red part of the map.

What i'm looking for in high sec is exactly the same that I look for in low sec and that i'd probably look for in null if I found an incentive to venture there:

I want to immerse into (the illusion of) a living, breathing world, not just a "game". Places I visit should be interesting, with backgrounds by both players and NPCs visible and easily accessible. I want to see a difference if the planet next to me has a population of 10 billion or none. Things should "make sense" and not disrupt the illusion.

I want a universe that changes. I want random events that change the game locally. I want markets, rats and system security that change dependent on player activity. I want places that are not frequented to offer more and better missions and former hubs that have become deserted. I want a different Jita every few years.

I want lots of things to do that are actually interesting, with depth and variety. Missions that are not ever-the-same, smuggling that works, trading that requires more than updating my orders, mining that includes a set of tools and decisions that make it a challenge, etc.. I want to be able to get better at things not just by training to level 5 but because I devised a better tactic. I want every of these systems to be as complex as fitting and combat currently is.

I want there to be choices and consequences. I want standings to NPC corps, sec status and FW results to really affect my options. I want to be able to antagonize faction X so that they will never let me dock again. I want there to always be a tradeoff with every decision. I want death to really hurt.

I want to be surprised at every corner. I don't want to be able to predict everything. I want branching missions that I don't know where they will lead by visiting a website. I want to be able to get incredibly lucky or really misfortunate.

So the actual bounty is escrowed and the payout depends on the actual cost to the person losing it?

This is REALLY good, I like this a lot. It doesn't create new money in the game since you have to put it up front and it causes you to only get paid if you cause hurt to the person who died.

Thank you for offering this idea, I'm going to see if it can get some legs.

I think one of the more important things is just having more stuff to do, especially with others. More group related things, or just more things in general need to be added. Maybe a smaller scale, private/fleetwise incursion, or other random events?

Since your focus seems to be careers, I have three suggestions.

Bounty hunting. This has already been suggested a few times in this thread, but I'm adding support because this career path is pretty desperately needed in a game about shooting other people's space ships. This isn't specifically a high-sec thing, but it would promote PvP in high-sec. Taurean Eltanin wrote a blog post outlining an idea -- while I don't agree with everything he said, it's a really good base to work from. It works based off turning killrights into a bounty and part of the idea is depriving the criminal of his insurance -- but only allows registered bounty hunters to collect. Taurean suggests some minimum security status, but I don't see why you can't just let anybody do it. Maybe some of this can be combined with Mogopogo's suggestions.

Mercenary work. We already have mercenaries, but it's a sort of ad hoc thing generally used to harass or demoralize a target. It quite leaves out any sort of defensive work. I wrote a post about this quite a while back. It would be great if you could have defense contracts with mercenaries which would put them into the war immediately as sort of an extension of your own corporation. Clearly there's still room here to be vile and cause problems (by not actively doing any defense even when hired) but with the right kind of contracts in place you could ensure a decent reward for active mercenaries.

Lawmen. I think we ought to remove or greatly delay the faction navy spawns that harass criminals moving in high-security space. Give players a chance to do some of that work if they want to -- I know I would. But I think you've got to couple this with changes to security status -- make it harder to work off your negative status. Seriously, it makes no sense that a primary money-making activity fixes your status as a criminal. I wrote a little more about it, but it's not as important as the core of the idea -- specifics just bog things down sometimes.

Bring PvP junkies to high-sec.

I would like this a lot, like urban decay/renewal. But what happens to the chars who resub and find themselves in a security shift high-low? If you're a flashy red and you log on and your former pipe system is now hisec, do you just get destroyed on the undock? Less of a problem: people who have a hisec POS who are suddenly in low. (Less of a problem because they just wind up taking them down or losing them, I suppose.) Or a returning player who, say, has all his crap in Motsu and comes back to find out it will take him 4 jumps to get himself (and all his crap) to hisec.

Would a 0.1 system be switchable to NPC null, or vice-versa? Or even more crazy, would a null alliance be able to build an empire island in the middle of their sovereign space? (Why they would want to is anyone's guess, though it might be funny to do it to someone else's sovereign space...)

I could see changing security levels in systems without bridging between high/low/null as a dynamic system and a way to spread out mission-runner congestion without just moving the agents around in a patch. 6 gazillion navy missions run in Motsu implies a higher active population of citizens (implied NPC citizens), which can support/require more CONCORD, which moves the security status up after a very long time, which makes the agents less profitable, which encourages people to move. You may wind up with some goofy system security jumps like this though (going from 0.8 to 0.4 for instance), making the security map less sensible.

Hmmmm....

In no particular order:

1) Suicide-ganking should never, under any possible circumstances, be removed. Ever! But insurance payouts for CONCORD'okken ship-loss should be--it's just stupid, and this game needs the ISK-sink. (Not every Hulk that runs afoul of the ole' reliable Arty-Pest is going to be fitted with a Pithi A-tybe SSB, after all, and how often will it drop even if they are? Potential real rewards, but also real risk.)

1a) Ninja-salvaging should likewise never be removed, or nerfed anymore...It's been nerfed enough as it is, since Apocrypha, and should remain a viable career-path.

2) WarDec--neutral RR is flagged as war-target, and gets gate- and docking-aggro timer. Neutral swap-Orca, same deal.

3) Bounty-Hunting: Lots of good ideas here and elsewhere, so I needn't repeat them, except to re-iterate that the current system is a complete waste of server- and client-side resources. Not just the mechanic needs re-inventing, but as stated repeatedly elsewhere, it needs to be made a viable career-path, as well.

4) Allow covert-cynos and covert-cyno bridging in hisec! Yes...YES!! This will add a whole new dimension to hisec warfare, ninja-looting, and if the gankers have a lot of money to burn, suicide-ganking, too. Subject to the following limitation: If you light a covert cyno on the grid of a gate or station, then you draw gate-gun/station-gun aggro, and if in 0.8+, then also faction-police aggro (Force-recons won't be tanking that kind of beating for too long, so again, risk vs. reward on a tactical level).

5) Smuggling: The chairwoman of the last CSM, Mynxee, had a great idea for networks of "smuggler stargates."

I say let these run throughout hisec, losec, and nullsec, and let the "Smuggling" skill offer a chance of finding out that one (or more) exist in the constellation you're in. CONCORD and the NPC police of course, don't know about them, and they have to be probed down, and you know which constellation that particular run goes to, but no more--IE, you don't know how many gates on the way, or exactly which system they go to, just which constellation. At the end-point system, there is a probe-able wormhole (known-space to known-space only) that may take you to a trade-hub...Or it may drop you right into the waiting arms of an NPC Customs fleet. Or, it may drop you right in the middle of deep-sov null

7) PvE: This needs to be much more focussed towards PvP-style fits and tactics--instead of a mob of umpty-dozen stupid red crosses, you just fight a few, but they all omni- and/or buffer tank, use neuting, pointing, and racial EWAR, Sleeper/Incursion AI, and you have to point/web/neut the completion-trigger to keep it from warping off. But not before killing/jamming/damping/otherwise "rendering powerless" his two little RR buddies. Should breed a harder specimen of carebear, I think

8) Mining--goes without saying, but needs to much more interesting/dynamic, and much less bottable.

That's all for now, I'm nodding off at the keyboard...And, yes: This thread--not sure if meta-troll/scam, but whatever...

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Something New:
I really like this idea! Being a gladiator could be a career path. Have some sort of base payout for competing (some small amount) then the house awards the winner with some isk depending on a ladder/rank system. Throw in some side betting. However, it would all have to be instanced with a queue. I would want to log on and just jump into a match. I do not want to deal with organizing a match or trying to find someone to fight. Maybe it could be some sort of virtual sport that people play while docked.

Something Old:
Missions... I once had an idea about leveling each agent. Like they all start off at level 1 but by doing some storyline missions for them, the agent will gain standing with their corp, so then the corp will give the agent a harder storyline. With all of those missions we do for an agent, I would think that the agent is seeing some benefit also. However, I would still want the agent to be able to give out those random non-storyline mission at what ever level they are at and each storyline has to be unique to each agent. I would not want to see two agents with the same exact storyline mission.