EVE General Discussion

Ok this has been said about twenty times already but what the hell 21 is a good number

The issue is that alliances can only exist in 0.0 if they behave efficiently. Inefficient alliances will be outcompeted by better run organisations, and eventually fail.

Now I just know that you're itching at this point to say something edgy and cool about blobs and fields of blues and blah blah blah. Please don't because it's stupid and it's wrong. Players in 0.0 aren't some kind of mind-ray victims who do this **** because they've been hypnotised into it. They do it because it's the correct game-theory thing to do. They're punished if they don't do it by other organisations who do because that's what the mechanics of the game dictate.

So the result is: sov 0.0 is sterile and lifeless. Once you've ratted yourself up enough ISK for a couple of carriers and a few pimp roaming ships for "hobby" PvP, there's not even any need to rat any more, because all you ever lose is ship on alliance ops, and they get reimbursed. So people just don't log in. They wait for fleet pings, long in, and hope that this time, someone will get in a lucky bubble or screw up a timer or something and that the opposition will have something big enough at stake to actually fight over. Again, not because they're dumb, or stupid, but because this is the behaviour that the mechanics of the game make optimal. Roaming gangs are pointless, because everyone's playing HoN except a few dudes in covops or spying looking for an opportunity. So the only ships in the systems are auto-safing bots.

If instead there was a viable player ecosystem, a collection of worthwhile things to do, if it was actually more efficient for alliances to build their ships and invent their T2 in their own space, and so on, then perhaps, just maybe, just possiblly, small stakes PvP might become viable again as well. There would actually be a point to doing quick incursions into hostile space. We would actually be able to apply small gangs in a meaningful way. There might actually be real people, actual EVE players logged into 0.0 systems and doing stuff, supporting a further ecological layer of other people trying to stop them, and a tertiary layer of defenders, stuff happening, things worth logging in for, niches for new players to operate in 0.0, there might be a value to making sure that all the space you control is fully utilised... you get the picture.

Wallet flashy is all very well. A reason to log in and play is worth infinitely more.

Ok this has been said about twenty times already but what the hell 21 is a good number

The issue is that alliances can only exist in 0.0 if they behave efficiently. Inefficient alliances will be outcompeted by better run organisations, and eventually fail.

Currently, conditions in 0.0 are such that the efficiency maxima is to basically do nothing but rat, and then PvP by waiting on Titans for the other side to make a mistake first. There's no good reason to do anything else in 0.0; it's inefficient to make stuff, R&D stuff, invent stuff, mine. The only things to do in sov 0.0 that it aren't considerably better to do elsewhere is shoot red pluses, and even then it's not that great compared to W-space, and to Titan around the place.

Now I just know that you're itching at this point to say something edgy and cool about blobs and fields of blues and blah blah blah. Please don't because it's stupid and it's wrong. Players in 0.0 aren't some kind of mind-ray victims who do this **** because they've been hypnotised into it. They do it because it's the correct game-theory thing to do. They're punished if they don't do it by other organisations who do because that's what the mechanics of the game dictate.

So the result is: sov 0.0 is sterile and lifeless. Once you've ratted yourself up enough ISK for a couple of carriers and a few pimp roaming ships for "hobby" PvP, there's not even any need to rat any more, because all you ever lose is ship on alliance ops, and they get reimbursed. So people just don't log in. They wait for fleet pings, long in, and hope that this time, someone will get in a lucky bubble or screw up a timer or something and that the opposition will have something big enough at stake to actually fight over. Again, not because they're dumb, or stupid, but because this is the behaviour that the mechanics of the game make optimal. Roaming gangs are pointless, because everyone's playing HoN except a few dudes in covops or spying looking for an opportunity. So the only ships in the systems are auto-safing bots.

If instead there was a viable player ecosystem, a collection of worthwhile things to do, if it was actually more efficient for alliances to build their ships and invent their T2 in their own space, and so on, then perhaps, just maybe, just possiblly, small stakes PvP might become viable again as well. There would actually be a point to doing quick incursions into hostile space. We would actually be able to apply small gangs in a meaningful way. There might actually be real people, actual EVE players logged into 0.0 systems and doing stuff, supporting a further ecological layer of other people trying to stop them, and a tertiary layer of defenders, stuff happening, things worth logging in for, niches for new players to operate in 0.0, there might be a value to making sure that all the space you control is fully utilised... you get the picture.

Wallet flashy is all very well. A reason to log in and play is worth infinitely more.

Once you realise that no-one is going to spend x hours of sum effort and 150M ISk to build a battleship in their own space when they can spend x/2 hours and 130M ISK to build it in hi-sec (ditto research, invention, mining, etc), then you can see what needs to happen.

At the moment, sov 0.0 is now basically held on faith that it's going to get fixed. That faith isn't limitless.

New players always keep a game aloat, not veteran. Well, let me not speak in definitives...

Plexing pilots do not keep the game afloat as much as newer pilots.

What I'm confused with, is how Malcanis in one post said that null is sterile and void because you ratted enough isk yet if there was more, then incursions would be doable.

That statement made no sense. You have on one side saying you have enough isk, but then you have another that if you could make more isk you'd do incursions?

Do incursions anyways. Null industry has nothing to do with that if you truly have the isk and skills to get what you want. You don't have to have t2 to do an incursion, and it isn't impossible to get t2 in null anyways.

So the result is: sov 0.0 is sterile and lifeless. Once you've ratted yourself up enough ISK for a couple of carriers and a few pimp roaming ships for "hobby" PvP, there's not even any need to rat any more, because all you ever lose is ship on alliance ops, and they get reimbursed. So people just don't log in. They wait for fleet pings, long in, and hope that this time, someone will get in a lucky bubble or screw up a timer or something and that the opposition will have something big enough at stake to actually fight over. Again, not because they're dumb, or stupid, but because this is the behaviour that the mechanics of the game make optimal. Roaming gangs are pointless, because everyone's playing HoN except a few dudes in covops or spying looking for an opportunity. So the only ships in the systems are auto-safing bots.

If instead there was a viable player ecosystem, a collection of worthwhile things to do, if it was actually more efficient for alliances to build their ships and invent their T2 in their own space, and so on, then perhaps, just maybe, just possiblly, small stakes PvP might become viable again as well. There would actually be a point to doing quick incursions into hostile space. We would actually be able to apply small gangs in a meaningful way. There might actually be real people, actual EVE players logged into 0.0 systems and doing stuff, supporting a further ecological layer of other people trying to stop them, and a tertiary layer of defenders, stuff happening, things worth logging in for, niches for new players to operate in 0.0, there might be a value to making sure that all the space you control is fully utilised... you get the picture.

Wallet flashy is all very well. A reason to log in and play is worth infinitely more.

"incursion" in the sense that a roaming gang into your enemy alliance's space is an incursion, not the Sansha kind.

Apologies for the confusion.

Sadly your is wishful thinking. The worthwhile things to do in this game are small roams with everyone's butt at stake and depending on how well or bad they individually do.
Going big fleet is indeed the right thing to do in sov null sec but as you yourself say it gets stale after a while.

Where you are whishfully thinking then? At believing that once you have the "ecosystem" in place the game will become worth(ier) playing. It's not so, and it pains me infinitely to tell you so. Once you have "rebuilt" a player created hi sec it's just another hi sec: plain and boring like the "real" hi sec.

You'll still miss small gang roams, the only thing that "kept" me in EvE and made me love it. The same small gang roams you get with tight friends in other PvP games are what made my game in EvE, no amounts of hi sec can replace it, be it NPC or player made.

See you're stuck in the same old box. A busy, active, diverse 0.0 isn't by definition "hi-sec", unless you're circularly defining hi-sec as "busy active & diverse".

Your post basically boils down to "Nuh uh" without even saying why. Is my vision wishful thinking? Well maybe so, but it'll take more than your unsupported assertion to convince me.

What will definitely kill off sov 0.0 is not doing anything. You say "it'll be as boring as hi-sec" in my vision, but it couldn't be more boring than it already is.

If you think so, then prove it.

What will definitely kill off sov 0.0 is not doing anything. You say "it'll be as boring as hi-sec" in my vision, but it couldn't be more boring than it already is.

You also fell into "ideology", but who cares after all.

Circularly defined hi sec "busy active & diverse?" Nah, hi sec as most play it (mining, missioning, industry) is a borefest.
Your "busy, active, diverse 0.0" is not going to introduce something new and unseen either, it'll make living in there something more bearable but it's not really something that will keep people stuck with EvE forever. It'll be a variation of what they can experience already and will get old too, after a while.

My unsupported assertion is actually more supported than your dreams, because we already have a perfect farmville showing how life may become after you get your farmville. The only profound difference being that you can lose the player created farmville, which might bring in feelings but not feelings established citizens will like.




Now, do the last step with your logic and you'll get to my point. Today null is boring, but tomorrow, after the initial "oooh, aaaah" will have settled down, it'll become almost as boring.

EvE needs new unknown, new challenges, new unseen experiences, new horizons. And copying existing and exhausted content everywhere is going to help but just for 2-3 years then you will also feel what I say now.
You have to look farter than this, the game has to start planning for new experiences today so after those 2-3 years there'll pop a new Apochrypha "much new content" expansion with new experiences to be had.

Else EvE will become the Far West game minus the Far West, that is an aging, stale shell of itself.

I had a really quick look at these and it seemed the players did not contribute that much towards it. Maybe we are just more vocal nowdays.