EVE General Discussion

The cartels and their dev's have been bleeding high sec dry for years no, bit by bit, drop by drop. First shot that I can remember is how soundwave wrecked agent RP, but there were likely ones before that. And remember, CCP can't afford a "headshot" to high sec, not until they think the demographics change a lot more, and enough people have migrated to null sec to keep the lights on when the killer blow does hammer down on high sec.

So what we have is a little bit more impoverishment of high sec, a little more enrichment of null sec, every major release, and now, it will be every 6 weeks. If the propaganda is to be believed (which it is not), the typical casual high sec player only hangs around in high sec 7 months before they quit or move to null / wormholes or even low. That means the baseline of expectations of what high sec should be keeps degrading, as a new crop of high sec players show up with no memory of the losses high sec has incurred.

It is abundantly clear that the cartel leaders have directed CCP to give up on that 7 month casual player that won't ever move to null sec. CCP has been convinced that there will always be enough new grist for the mill that will sub up for 6 or 7 months out of curiosity after reading about some epic battle (hey CCP, I see that the huge spike in player activity dropped away real fast), and a flow of disposable subscriptions will continue at a steady pace, regardless of how much high sec is a wasteland.

That logic is of course, utterly insane, but CCP's actions clearly demonstrate that is their opinion of high sec players.

So yeah, if you look at the CSM in that context, they are highly effective, at least the cartel portion, which is the overwhelming majority again in the latest iteration.

So, the next 4 or 5 mini-releases:

1. Tweaking all the new levers with this industry overhaul in order to not break the economy, but allow for an orderly transition of the vast vast majority of the high sec industrial wealth to null sec.
2. Some slight tweaks to sov mechanics, but pretty much cosmetic.
3. T2 invention wrecked for high sec as industry just was.
4. And then, the next body blow to high sec, Incursion and mission income hammered in some way. I always believed it would just be some across the board nerf to bounties, but I see now that it will be more insidious. More like the removal of all loot from missions, and the buffing of the Incursion rats, making the sites take longer to finish.

Oh yes, and I must not forget POS's. When null sec industry gets really geared up, which will take at least a couple months to happen, if the cartels feel that POS's can play a large role in that industry, then POS mechanics will get some love. If it remains high sec, low sec, and wh's complaining about POS mechanics, nothing serious will be done "because it's hard".

Notice I say nothing about serious sov mechanics nor force projection. The cartels will likely want a quiet summer, maybe even the fall, so no major changes there. That being said, CCP is now leaning on the cartels to provide even larger amounts of publicity on a regular basis to provide that high sec grist I spoke of earlier. So the cartels will have to arrange some kind of big event , likely near the end of summer, early fall, as the effects of the high sec casual industrial player exiting the game really start to show up in the sub numbers.

That is the beauty of the whole CCP subscription mechanics and the cartel's plans. Because of multi-month subs, any game mechanic change that drives people from the game is lagged and spread over time, so the cartels can obfuscate the real impact a game mechanic change had on the sub base.

By the time the next set of subscription numbers are released, so many things will have changed, the cartels and CCP can state any number of factors drove the subscription changes.

a mewn.

On one side we have the libertarians, who adore Eve because it is their twisted vision of what their real world utopia is.
On the other side, you have the sane, moral, compassionate people, who are horrified by the distillation into a game of all that is wrong with humanity.

Try not to mistake laughing at goons in the forums with goons for anti-goon hatred.

Still, if you want to think folk hate the goons, don't let me stop you.

Yeah, personal freedom is just so evil, am I right?

Or should we only have the freedom to choose if we choose correctly?

More like the removal of all loot from missions, and the buffing of the Incursion rats, making the sites take longer to finish.

these are pretty good suggestions mate

It is not like I am giving the CSM ideas. These directives, and more, have already delivered to the CCP dev's.
Like I have said before, every pilot generating PvE income in high sec is someone not paying a tithe to the cartel leaders, and they can't have that.

Wow, I didn't know 'tithe' was English word for that "pay your master 1/10th of your earnings" thing. Live and learn, live and learn...