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Dear CCP, regarding rental empires

Author
Erutpar Ambient
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2013-08-24 00:10:39 UTC
So Moon Goo Isk Faucet is a thing of the past. The new "Thing" is, as you may have noticed, Renting space to care bears. This brings up a few issues.

-First of all, the changes to moon harvesting is what caused the war for Fountain. Now that the war is over and people are finally realizing that the R64's really arn't as great as they thought what will be the new conflict driver? I really fail to see another major war like that happening for resources in the near or distant future without another giant change like the Moon Goo revamp.

-So the new source of income in the galaxy is renting space. Do you think this will this be a new conflict driver? Do you think there will be sov level conflict or will it all just be small gang income disruption conflict?

-That brings up another point. Currently the state of null sec is very resistant to this style of income. There is no way for entities to protect their workers outside of protecting their sov structures. Even with 24/7 diligence patrolling systems and choke points etc there are still Wormholes that will bypass that all. And once you get a Cloaked ship in your system, there's no way to get rid of it without the pilot taking action. And in fact if they wanted to they could just covert cyno in another cyno ship at a safe spot to do all the dirty work and then resume cloaking forever and never be in any danger.

I do realize that the Cloak vs Local debate is very intricate and requires a lot of simultaneous changes to get right but i know you guys can do it. It's just a matter of getting to it. This is obviously a huge deal for lots of people as you'll see them come to the forums to rant constantly. No other issue is brought up so often so steadily or so "passionately.' It does need to be addressed in some way soon. There's been a lot of ideas (not just the same idea) on how to handle it. Hopefully you guys can decided on the right one.

-Another issue is this. What's to stop the Blue Donut from spreading around Tranquility just as it has spread around Serenity? Serenity has 3 blocks of very similar power all at odds with each other. Or so they want you to believe. They stage fights to keep their members happy but basically all they do is a type of rental program for all of their members to fund themselves in RMT. Though the RMT thing may or may not apply the idea still stands, what's to stop Blocks from just parking in their spot and blue up everyone else in null sec? You can't fight a physical war for renters, you can just give them a better deal or take the space where they live.

-An extended point to the previous issue is the opposite but same. What's to stop one bloc that becomes super powerful from taking over all of sov space and thus imposing another type of blue donut? The more space you have, the more space you can rent and with that the more income you have. With unlimited income it wouldn't be impossible for some entity to be able to do this if they so wanted. It would technically only take 1 person to keep track of the renters and collect all of the rent.

So the big question here: Is CCP aware of the possible situations that Sov Null could possibly end up in?

If not, then maybe there should be a new position to fill at CCP.
If yes, then what do you guys think about the situation and do you have any insight into the future plans that you'd be willing to share?

This would be a great item not to have to wait and fix down the road.

Thanks!
Cade Windstalker
#2 - 2013-08-24 01:22:30 UTC
I think it's entirely too early to tell if some of the long-range predictions about renting in null are going to come true or not. The whole concept is that it's going to scale endlessly and allow for the so-called "blue donut" but so far the only evidence we have of this is CFC's recent victory over Test, who not a year ago were a close ally of the people who just finished kicking their teeth in.

It's not even like renting is some new big thing, sure Goons just got into it but other have been doing it for years and have, so far, completely failed to take over null. If you haven't noticed over Eve's long history it's rarely a military conflict that actually takes down a big Alliance.


  • BoB died due to internal sabotage, which was directly a result of internal drama.
  • Goons v1.0 died to Karttoon getting bored and self destructing the alliance.
  • Atlas died because their core membership stopped playing, then they made some really stupid diplomatic moves, and then they were finally finished off without a fight.
  • TEST just recently died because they alienated their allies and internal drama led to external drama and an ill advised war, which they started.


There are probably a few examples I'm forgetting here, but the long and short of it is that big alliances rarely die in a straight up fight, especially big alliances with allies. The original Northern Coalition fought off BoB for years and only fell apart after the threat that banded them together had disintegrated for the last time. Arguably Solar died due to direct combat but that all started with ghastly diplomatic mistakes too and probably wouldn't have progressed to annihilation if Solar hadn't turned out to be too weak to put up an actual fight.

Given that CCP have been chewing on the "How do we make Sov/Null Sec mechanics fun?" problem for years I'd say they're very very aware of it, and if they aren't then the CSM will probably give them an ear full at the summit next week. There's been a panel on null and sov every year for the last... probably as long as the CSM has existed and if anything it's thornier than the Local/Cloaking debate and infinitely more complicated.
Erutpar Ambient
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2013-08-24 01:42:07 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
*no need to requote


Of the things you said, there's only one that i can recomment on. Regardless of the history of eve, sov, renting etc , this is something new. With the Goons doing a 180 on their ideology on rental it's pretty apparent. Renting space is the only effective means of income on an Alliance/Coalition level.

Prior to now, it was the only viable means of income in very specific locations. Now it is the only viable means anywhere. This will cause changes in lots of places. First of all, defending moons is going to be less emphasized. Though that could be supplemented with additional CSAAs put up by the rental corps/alliances to a certain extent.

That's another point, how many of these new rental corps/alliances will be building supers/titans? Is that something we want more of in the game? Is it something to be concerned with? I guess that really depends on the capital/supercap rebalances we'll get eventually.

I just wanted to reemphasize that this really is a new period in EVE history. I wonder if this was foreseen from the onset of moon goo changes.
Cade Windstalker
#4 - 2013-08-24 02:13:41 UTC
Erutpar Ambient wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
*no need to requote


Of the things you said, there's only one that i can recomment on. Regardless of the history of eve, sov, renting etc , this is something new. With the Goons doing a 180 on their ideology on rental it's pretty apparent. Renting space is the only effective means of income on an Alliance/Coalition level.

Prior to now, it was the only viable means of income in very specific locations. Now it is the only viable means anywhere. This will cause changes in lots of places. First of all, defending moons is going to be less emphasized. Though that could be supplemented with additional CSAAs put up by the rental corps/alliances to a certain extent.

That's another point, how many of these new rental corps/alliances will be building supers/titans? Is that something we want more of in the game? Is it something to be concerned with? I guess that really depends on the capital/supercap rebalances we'll get eventually.

I just wanted to reemphasize that this really is a new period in EVE history. I wonder if this was foreseen from the onset of moon goo changes.


I really think that whether or not it's a new period in Eve or just a speed bump in the road of history is going to be something to be determined in retrospect, not right now. Goons haven't even started up rentals yet. This may be a turning point for them or the entire program could crash and burn horribly. My bet is that nothing much will change, at least for the foreseeable future.

Specifically on the note of Supers/Titans there is nothing stopping someone, with or without renting space, from building or having a Titan or Super Carrier built. You can have one built for materials plus a fee right now. Basically anyone who can afford to rent a good system can probably also afford a Super Cap.
Erutpar Ambient
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2013-08-24 04:36:01 UTC
You don't need retrospect to understand that this is a new period. The technetium isk faucet has been turned off. That in and of itself is the beginning of a new period. What becomes of it has yet to be seen.

Now just because we don't know the future doesn't mean we can't have some idea of what will happen. Though there may be some possibilities that nobody could predict the likely hood of that is much less than the things I have already brought up. The place we are in right now is in the middle of a shift. This isn't the pre-moon rebalance period where most if not all of the possibilities are impossible to foresee. We are caught in a flow, a river even, and you can see most if not all of the possibilities awaiting us down stream.
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Goons haven't even started up rentals yet. This may be a turning point for them or the entire program could crash and burn horribly. My bet is that nothing much will change, at least for the foreseeable future.


What i foresee is this. Goons will not be able to start up a rental program successfully. Sure there will be some people/a corp or 2 that are either not too familiar with them or have not yet been scammed by them. Which will then likely be harassed constantly by none other than the Goon's alts. And that will be the extent of their rental program. However, other CFC entities will be able to pick up renters in some shape or form. And the goons will devise some way to skim off the top of that to pay their own bills while continuing to harass their own renters with alts.

However there are other possibilities including the rental program being successful or it being very not successful causing the fail cascade of goons. Less likely but still possible and there may be other even less imaginable possibilities like the goons not harassing their own renters and other things i can't even fathom, but there again they're so much less likely they're not even on the radar.

The point is this, we can see the possibilities that are most likely. We can even see the possibilities that are less likely. We can even see some that are not likely at all. But we can foresee that because of our past experience, the present transitions and how well we understand the current situations and their implications.

This always happens in this game. The little things turn into big things. And the big things always fizzle out into "Meh".

Little thing turned into big thing: Contact + standings system. Such a little feature intended to help you know who are your friends and enemies turns eve into Coalition Online. If they removed this feature think about how big of an impact this would have. They could of changed it long ago before the Coalitions set in and not have made too much of a difference. But then again i guess having 5000 people fighting is good for advertisement. Now thats an unintended yet smashing success for such a little feature.

Big things that fizzled: Bounty system, Scanning system, Data Site mini-game, Dust 514, Captain's Quarters+WiS, etc etc etc.

With the big things that fizzle they didn't really receive any support. They really need the little things to make them work because it's the little things that will make or break something. ex: titans: titans are the big thing, tracking, aoe DD, and subcap DD are the little things (but sure they feel like big things).

Odyssey was supposed to be all about scanning and exploration. However the only thing to really impact the game at all was the Moon goo rebalance which really has nothing to do with "exploration" except for the fact that you gotta use probes to scan the moons composition.

For once I'd like to see CCP take a preemptive stance on dealing with an issue. Not the "we'll fix it later" or "it's good enough" and never get to it stance.
Cade Windstalker
#6 - 2013-08-24 06:35:33 UTC
Erutpar Ambient wrote:
You don't need retrospect to understand that this is a new period. The technetium isk faucet has been turned off. That in and of itself is the beginning of a new period. What becomes of it has yet to be seen.

.......

Odyssey was supposed to be all about scanning and exploration. However the only thing to really impact the game at all was the Moon goo rebalance which really has nothing to do with "exploration" except for the fact that you gotta use probes to scan the moons composition.

For once I'd like to see CCP take a preemptive stance on dealing with an issue. Not the "we'll fix it later" or "it's good enough" and never get to it stance.


So, first off I want to say I agree with the first bit. The changes to moon minerals are going to have a long running impact on at least Null Security space, though it remains to be seen what the impact on T2 ships and the rest of the game is going to be. We probably won't know anything close to the full impact until the various non-capital ship re-balancing is done with and the markets have fully absorbed and adjusted to the changes in ship popularity and price.

As for the second bit...

I think for anyone who does very much scanning or exploration Odyssey has severely shaken things up and seems to be having the most effect on that profession in general and on wormholes specifically. Those changes are going to have lots of little impacts and are going to directly impact a great deal of people, from people who use components in those sites for production, to miners in "grav sites", to the site runners themselves.

As for CCP, I think I'd rather see these changes play-out a little before they jump in an react preemptively. We honestly don't know for sure what is going to happen and until both the player base and CCP have a better idea of the long term direction and impact of these changes it would be a disservice to the player base for them to jump in prematurely with changes or suggested changes that might send things careening off in a different direction.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#7 - 2013-08-24 07:34:01 UTC
Erutpar Ambient wrote:

-First of all, the changes to moon harvesting is what caused the war for Fountain...the Blue Donut....


FFS

Roll

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Sable Moran
Moran Light Industries
#8 - 2013-08-24 07:43:38 UTC  |  Edited by: Sable Moran
Erutpar Ambient wrote:
-So the new source of income in the galaxy is renting space. Do you think this will this be a new conflict driver?


Renting means there will be more people there. And more people will always mean more drama.

So the answer to your question is unequivocal yes.

Sable's Ammo Shop at Alentene V - Moon 4 - Duvolle Labs Factory. Hybrid charges, Projectile ammo, Missiles, Drones, Ships, Need'em? We have'em, at affordable prices. Pop in at our Ammo Shop in sunny Alentene.

Cade Windstalker
#9 - 2013-08-24 07:46:43 UTC
Sable Moran wrote:
Erutpar Ambient wrote:
-So the new source of income in the galaxy is renting space. Do you think this will this be a new conflict driver?


Renting means there will be more people there. And more people will always mean more drama.

So the answer to your question is unequivocal yes.


Don't forget that drama recursively generates more drama Lol
Mallak Azaria
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#10 - 2013-08-24 09:14:19 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:

  • TEST just recently died because they alienated their allies and internal drama led to external drama and an ill advised war, which they started.


Don't forget that they also had no money after TEST Director Baki Yuki sold 300 R64's to a player called Baki Yuki.

This post was lovingly crafted by a member of the Goonwaffe Posting Cabal, proud member of the popular gay hookup site somethingawful.com, Spelling Bee, Grammar Gestapo & #1 Official Gevlon Goblin Fanclub member.

Cade Windstalker
#11 - 2013-08-24 09:37:04 UTC
Mallak Azaria wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:

  • TEST just recently died because they alienated their allies and internal drama led to external drama and an ill advised war, which they started.


Don't forget that they also had no money after TEST Director Baki Yuki sold 300 R64's to a player called Baki Yuki.


Like I said, internal drama.

If I went into every theft, minor and major, that resulted out of just the above list I'd use up the character count in a single post twice over. If I expanded the list I'd probably set a new record for longest series of posts shortly before the ISD banned me for a week for spam Lol
Mallak Azaria
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#12 - 2013-08-24 09:39:46 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Mallak Azaria wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:

  • TEST just recently died because they alienated their allies and internal drama led to external drama and an ill advised war, which they started.


Don't forget that they also had no money after TEST Director Baki Yuki sold 300 R64's to a player called Baki Yuki.


Like I said, internal drama.

If I went into every theft, minor and major, that resulted out of just the above list I'd use up the character count in a single post twice over. If I expanded the list I'd probably set a new record for longest series of posts shortly before the ISD banned me for a week for spam Lol


It doesn't even qualify as theft or internal drama. You should read up on it, it's a very interesting story.

This post was lovingly crafted by a member of the Goonwaffe Posting Cabal, proud member of the popular gay hookup site somethingawful.com, Spelling Bee, Grammar Gestapo & #1 Official Gevlon Goblin Fanclub member.

Cade Windstalker
#13 - 2013-08-24 09:50:23 UTC
Mallak Azaria wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Mallak Azaria wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:

  • TEST just recently died because they alienated their allies and internal drama led to external drama and an ill advised war, which they started.


Don't forget that they also had no money after TEST Director Baki Yuki sold 300 R64's to a player called Baki Yuki.


Like I said, internal drama.

If I went into every theft, minor and major, that resulted out of just the above list I'd use up the character count in a single post twice over. If I expanded the list I'd probably set a new record for longest series of posts shortly before the ISD banned me for a week for spam Lol


It doesn't even qualify as theft or internal drama. You should read up on it, it's a very interesting story.


By all means, shoot me a link. I'm always interested in bit of Eve history and try to collect them whenever I can.

Also I find it somewhat amusing that you seem to have showed up in several threads I'm posting in Big smile
Mallak Azaria
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#14 - 2013-08-24 10:25:00 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Mallak Azaria wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Mallak Azaria wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:

  • TEST just recently died because they alienated their allies and internal drama led to external drama and an ill advised war, which they started.


Don't forget that they also had no money after TEST Director Baki Yuki sold 300 R64's to a player called Baki Yuki.


Like I said, internal drama.

If I went into every theft, minor and major, that resulted out of just the above list I'd use up the character count in a single post twice over. If I expanded the list I'd probably set a new record for longest series of posts shortly before the ISD banned me for a week for spam Lol


It doesn't even qualify as theft or internal drama. You should read up on it, it's a very interesting story.


By all means, shoot me a link. I'm always interested in bit of Eve history and try to collect them whenever I can.

Also I find it somewhat amusing that you seem to have showed up in several threads I'm posting in Big smile


kugutsumen.com

This post was lovingly crafted by a member of the Goonwaffe Posting Cabal, proud member of the popular gay hookup site somethingawful.com, Spelling Bee, Grammar Gestapo & #1 Official Gevlon Goblin Fanclub member.

ExookiZ
The Dark Space Initiative
Scary Wormhole People
#15 - 2013-08-24 13:41:45 UTC
the removal of isk faucents is never a bad thing. moon mining was way too much passive isk anyways. I dont think TQ will ever be as boring and "blue donut" as serenity because our server is a lot more diverse than Serenity's is.

Theres a million differences between people on our server and I dont foresee TQ ever getting along as theirs does. Eve is about conflict, and there will always be people who want to go out roaming, conflict for conflicts sake is plenty a driver.

Event Organizer of EVE North East

Erutpar Ambient
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#16 - 2013-08-24 15:41:30 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
As for CCP, I think I'd rather see these changes play-out a little before they jump in an react preemptively. We honestly don't know for sure what is going to happen and until both the player base and CCP have a better idea of the long term direction and impact of these changes it would be a disservice to the player base for them to jump in prematurely with changes or suggested changes that might send things careening off in a different direction.


I'm not saying they should jump in and undo things. I'm saying they need to speed up things that already need fixing. The current state of sov and null mechanics coupled with this new state of null sec affairs is going to bring some new problems all around. The biggest problem being that there's no "Game Mechanic" sov conflict driver anymore. Sure there's drama and the search for fun but there's really nothing pushing for conflict provided by the game.

It doesn't have to be something that generates isk either. It could just be something that provides convenience. It could even be some convenience that we lose but it is available in some other way and limited in number. Say for instance there's a limited number of jump bridges in existence and they will always exist. So some entity could acquire some or all of them. They would be seen oh the Star Map so everyone knows where they are. And they can be reacquired by other entities. So you'll have this very large convenience but it would also be a very large target on your back. This is just a mediocre idea. But it's just a mini-brainstorm looking at the future for a conflict driver.

My who spiel about the "Little things are the big things" was for a reason. We just need some little things to make this foreseen problem not happen.
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#17 - 2013-08-24 16:41:41 UTC
if you want renting gone, what mechanic do you propose for alliance level income?


Also, who do BCA rent from these days, and could I interest you in some prime space in the vale of the silent? Roll
Erutpar Ambient
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#18 - 2013-08-24 18:42:49 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
if you want renting gone, what mechanic do you propose for alliance level income?


Also, who do BCA rent from these days, and could I interest you in some prime space in the vale of the silent? Roll


Lol Vale of the Silent, I see what you did there. ;)

I'm not saying i want renting gone at all. I'm saying that because it's the new focus of income for large scale entities then there is no game mechanic to fight over. Compared to renting space moon's are cheap. Who cares if someone comes and takes out your moon PoS. Just replace it later. The relative value of the ships to defend the moon vs the value of the (i guess specific type of) moon is now out of balance. How much can you send to defend a Moon Harvester without losing more than the actual value of the moon? Do you just defend it on principle?

And actually the thing about renting is that it really encourages entities to blue up to each other. It's currently impractical, if not impossible, to protect your renters from hostilities through action. The only real way to protect them is to negotiate blue standings with hostile entities.

I do think it's good that lots of people can get out to null make do well. And if that's what everyone thinks then we need some changes for this to progress in a good way.

We need a way to protect renters to an extent. I don't mean 100% but just an amount based on effort applied.
We need new things to fight over. Something that doesn't give one entity an edge over the other entities but definately something that may have consequences or rewards.
And we need reason to want to fight each other instead of blue balling each other.

We don't need any more reason to bring people together. We need more reason to break us apart.
RubyPorto
RubysRhymes
#19 - 2013-08-24 19:19:29 UTC  |  Edited by: RubyPorto
Erutpar Ambient wrote:
-Another issue is this. What's to stop the Blue Donut from spreading around Tranquility just as it has spread around Serenity? Serenity has 3 blocks of very similar power all at odds with each other. Or so they want you to believe. They stage fights to keep their members happy but basically all they do is a type of rental program for all of their members to fund themselves in RMT. Though the RMT thing may or may not apply the idea still stands, what's to stop Blocks from just parking in their spot and blue up everyone else in null sec? You can't fight a physical war for renters, you can just give them a better deal or take the space where they live.



"To support Alliance RMT, alliances do X... Alliance RMT may not actually exist, but Alliances still do X because of it..."
-Glorious OP

Roll

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths." -Abrazzar "the risk of having your day ruined by other people is the cornerstone with which EVE was built" -CCP Solomon

Tiberu Stundrif
Nifty Idustries
#20 - 2013-08-24 19:24:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Tiberu Stundrif
Erutpar Ambient wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
*no need to requote


Of the things you said, there's only one that i can recomment on. Regardless of the history of eve, sov, renting etc , this is something new. With the Goons doing a 180 on their ideology on rental it's pretty apparent. Renting space is the only effective means of income on an Alliance/Coalition level.

Prior to now, it was the only viable means of income in very specific locations. Now it is the only viable means anywhere. This will cause changes in lots of places. First of all, defending moons is going to be less emphasized. Though that could be supplemented with additional CSAAs put up by the rental corps/alliances to a certain extent.

That's another point, how many of these new rental corps/alliances will be building supers/titans? Is that something we want more of in the game? Is it something to be concerned with? I guess that really depends on the capital/supercap rebalances we'll get eventually.

I just wanted to reemphasize that this really is a new period in EVE history. I wonder if this was foreseen from the onset of moon goo changes.



This statement tells me that you simply don't have Situational Awareness and knowledge of long-term Game history.

This is the same argument I heard 2 years ago when the Drone Russians owned everything worth owning.

What ALWAYS happens to big empires? They fail-cascade. History in RL and Eve are evidence of this.

This whole thread is a rant for rant's sake without any basis in reality.

Edit: Renting is nothing new.
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