EVE General Discussion

This in not an idea any more

Has long has THIS doesn't change severely, they will keep bluing eatch other and complain they have nothing to do in null... poor bears.

alliance game mechanics were added relatively late and the oldest alliances date back way before that

OP (haven't read the rest yet, just came home) posted a real eye opener and a point of view that at least a few within CCP should cling to and counter any "buff everything because the players are angry, we might lose them!" short sighted arm flailing at CCP.

I posted some real, workable solutions to get more people in null-sec, in this thread.

People in null-sec were against it (go figure), and people in hi-sec liked my post but were too intimidated to throw in their own two cents.

The null-sec carebears want more people coming to null-sec, but not if it threatens their status quo.

The fact is, Alliances and Corporations need to be limited in scope. There needs to be limits on membership numbers and the amount of SOV they can claim. This will break up null-sec and cause lots of conflict - not because the old dusty Carebear Coalitions will be fighting eachother, but because players from hi-sec will finally be competing with players in null-sec over real estate.

Malcanis' posts now hidden. Be constructive, or cease to exist. Thanks.

The OP, and most posters in this thread, clearly haven't got a clue about nullsec. Let me educate you.

In the beginning, nullsec was anarchy; a power vacuum. But power abhors a vacuum, and so the supposedly lawless space of nullsec became the domain of large alliances. Where there is anarchy, the man with the biggest stick is the boss. That power and influence extends beyond formal sovereign borders, sometimes forcing nearby alliances to 'rent' their space (effectively pay tribute), or be forced off it to make way for someone who will pay. With me so far? Good.

Nullsec alliances have fought for the space they hold. They have bashed TCUs, i-hubs, stations and POSes in order to establish their control. It's a tedious and gruelling grind. So having gone through all that effort to conquer and develop their space, do you think nullsec players will be happy to let any old scrub come in and start exploiting the resources they have worked to take control of? Of course not. They didn't spend hours grinding through millions of hitpoints, and spend billions of ISK upgrading the resources of their space for your benefit. They did it for themselves. It's their space, and they are right to defend it.

If you want to live in nullsec, you have to serve the man with the big stick. If you don't want to do that, you have to either have the ISK or the diplomatic ability make nice with your neighbours, or be strong enough to carve out and protect your own domain. That's anarchy for you.

The reason nullsec is stagnant right now has everything to do with the mechanics of nullsec warfare and nothing to do with how jealously nullsec alliances protect their assets. Grinding through millions of hitpoints on sov structures for hours on end is a huge bore. The intended tools for that task (dreadnoughts) are unsuitable. The huge battles that are supposed to be one of the hallmarks of nullsec warfare are currently settled solely by which side has the most supercapitals, rendering all other tactics, skill and planning irrelevant, and excluding the vast majority of pilots from playing any decisive part in the fight.

The ability of 100-ship blobs to move around as quickly as 10-ship roaming gangs often ends with hideously lopsided - and critically unenjoyable - engagements. And even when 'good fights' do take place, it's normally between homogenous gangs of single types of ships, let alone ship classes. Fleets comprised entirely of Abaddons, Drakes, Hurricanes, Maelstroms, or Zealots, with a smattering of essential supporting logistics, tackle and interdiction, make fights rather one dimensional. Rock/paper/scissors is a good analogy for how solo PVP should work, but fleet PVP ought to be far more complex.

And on top of that, the opportunities to make ISK in nullsec, to fund all that PVP, are too limited compared to the easy-mode highsec isk faucets of level 4 missions and highsec incursions. Nullsec industry is nearly non-existent, due to the difficulty of using outposts for refining and production, and the ease of using jump freighters to and from highsec.

Because of all this, nullsec alliance warfare is a chore, and even the carebears that understand nullsec don't want to be there because they can make more ISK in highsec. That is why it has stagnated.

You could say that the players and alliances have created these problems, and for some of them, that would be half right. But you can't blame players and alliances for playing to win within the existing mechanics. If there is an imbalance, they will exploit it. If there is a way to smother any potential resistance, they will do so. It's CCP's job to design those mechanics in a way that keeps things interesting.

You're wrong. There's a lot more than just sov structures that only CCP can fix. Supercaps. Dreadnoughts. Overall ship and weapon balancing and useful roles to help diversity. The marginal utility of nullsec PVE over highsec. Lag. Blob mobility. The uselessness of outposts for industry. All of those things are mechanical problems, and have nothing to do with how players choose to play the game.

Sov-holding alliances would generally rather accumulate power than keep opponents in their midst to provide PVP content. That's fine - it's the engine of conflict. The problem is that the mechanics of that conflict are so shoddy that players are bored of it. Because of that, the pet alliances that should be growing into territory-hungry powerhouses and challenging the established powers, aren't growing any more because they've been struggling to recruit new people for months.

OP is brilliant.
I approve of this.

There are some interesting views in this, from both sides of the fence.

My opinion for what it is worth:

In any walk of life the majority of people will adapt to the systems which are put before them. The problem is that the current systems within eve favour numerical advantage over tactics, and the resources of null are well distributed so the large powers are happy with their lot.

The biggest threat to an alliances income stream is to be usurped from their space and have their assets taken away, so to mitigate this risk the alliance grows and forms power blocs. The size of the powerblocs has created a stalemate, and the risk of taking new space massively outstrips the potential profit of obtaining the space.

All this is natural, and would be expected in this kind of situation. There is not enough instability to cause conflict, or enough resource constraint to make people want to look elsewhere.

This creates a system which is near impossible for smaller alliances to thrive outside of someone elses shadow.

tl;dr ... Don't hate the player hate the game.

Well said.