Player Features and Ideas Discussion

One of the major aspects of EVE is it's Risk V Reward system. But across the various areas of isk making in EVE, this ratio seems way out of whack, meaning that in high it is quite commonly more profitable than doing activities in low or null. For example, in combat exploration, low frequently rewards many times that of highsec, yet mining in highsec quite often rewards better than in low due to the fact that you can quite often use a Hulk or Mackinaw without worry and don't have to dock up when there is a local spike (unless the new order faggots are about, in which case shield your eyes from local!). Solo missioning also fails in this regard, as level 4s don't change that much in reward from high to low, and incursions don't have a proper decent rise in isk value too for the risks taken.

What I propose is that the income from highsec mining/missioning/incursioning falls in line with a similar ratio of the high:low exploration average thereby making it worth people's time and effort to move into lowsec for these isk earning activities, rather than live their lives in high due to it's over-inflated isk:risk ratio.

TL;DR: A not so stealthy Nerf Highsec!™ thread.

Nerfing high-sec is not advisable. Buffing low/null is.

Low-sec should in fact deliver better rewards than null-sec. There is far more risk in low, where you don't have 30 alliance members within 2 jumps and no one else for a dozen.

EDIT: I am referring to ratting in sov null; missions and such in NPC null should deliver the same or maybe better rewards than low.

Figuring out a proper risk:reward ratio is difficult. Especially when players can alter the risk levels.

A better method would be to design rewards so that the risk:reward ratio adjusts itself. One way to do that is to divide each PvE activity by what it is, and the type of space it's in (high, low, null, W-Space*). For each combination of the type and location of an activity, there are unique rewards only obtainable by doing that activity in that type of space. Now the market will adjust the risk:reward ratio. If the reward is too low, players leave that activity/location for elsewhere, reducing supply and increasing the reward for people who stay. If it's too high, that attracts more people, increases supply and reduces reward.

What this means for mining is that there should be a mineral only obtainable in lowsec. That mineral will have its price increase until it's worth mining.
For missioning, have corps that only have agents in lowsec and unique items in their LP stores.
Exploration: Unique items in the drop table.

I think you get the basic idea by now. You'll also notice that there are other problems with this idea, like making sure that the lowsec mineral is mined in sufficient quantities that there isn't a shortage once an equilibrium price is reached. Those problems are solvable, but will require a lot of thought from CCP. Maybe even a tweak or two after they go live.

*Maybe further divide it by things like FW/non-FW lowsec, sov/NPC null.