Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There are a few things I would like to see, that I believe would successfully drive more combat, and bring more PVP to EVE.

First of all, and I believe the most important. Clone costs are ridiculous. PVP in small ships is very fun, and the core of PVP. Large fleet battles are epic, but few and far between, it is small gang combat in smaller ships where the bulk of our PVP should come from, even for a seasoned vet. You jump into a cheap ship for some stress free PVP you will likely die fast, even if you are very good, death is a part of PVP. So just PVP in ships you can afford to lose, or at least that is how it should work.

I get that clone costs are a good isk sink, but they are also a great limiter for PVP activity. Buy the time you get your character where you want them skill wise to fight, their clone cost to much, you can't afford to die very often, making you much more cautious in PVP.

The problem is you do not just lose the ship, you will likely get podded and lose your clone. It does not take long in EVE for the cost of replacing your clone to greatly out weight the cost of a cheap PVP ship.

I believe If it wasn't for the cost of clones, many more EVE players would be participating in small gang PVP. Personally I could afford to lose 100 frigates and cruisers, even battlecruisers, a week without even hurting my wallet, however I can not afford to replace my clone every time I die, So I stick to CTA's and fleet battles and do not do much small roaming. Which leads to me not being good at PVP, making me even more reluctant to risk my clone, and so on, a vicious circle keeping me out of PVP. I am sure there are many other players that do the same. To create more PVP we need to make it more affordable, not with cheaper ships, but eliminating, or drastically reducing clone costs that are preventing players from risking the loss of an expensive clone.

Second issue is blob warfare, not as big a deal as some would have you believe, but it does have and impact, however, there is not much that can be done about it.

Nobody wants to lose, so players will always seek whatever advantage they can in a fight. bringing more ships than the other guy gives such an advantage. Large fleet battles can be a lot of fun, but they can also be frustrating and annoying when lag and TiDi sets in.

What if CCP added mechanics to help limit the size of fleets?

Nothing major, or game breaking. my idea is to limit the amount of ships/mass that can go through a gate, or jump into a system per hour. They already do this in wormholes, which many claim to be the best PVP left in EVE. I believe the better PVP in wormholes has much more to do with the limit to fleet size, than the lack of players showing up in local chat.

Lets say after a certain mass of ships jumps through a gate, rather than despawning like a wormhole, it just goes offline for 30-60 minutes say due to depleted power cells or whatever. make this limit high, say around the point where TiDi starts to kick in. The same can be done with cyno's and jump beacons, After a certain mass jumps into the system it becomes unstable preventing additional jumps for 30-60 minutes. battles would still be able to escalate, but new arrivals/reinforcements would have to wait that extra 30-60 minutes.

This number could change depending on the system, for example certain key systems, or staging systems could have reinforced nodes allowing a higher cap.

While this would certainly have its draw backs, it could accomplish several very beneficial things. Fleet battles will be kept at a size that is much more enjoyable for those participating. Would it suck to get locked out because the system where the fight takes place is full, yes it would, but when you do get in, the fight will be more fun.

Such a system would also server to limit power projection for the big coalitions. If the fleet size that can jump into a fight is limited, then the issue of who ever brings the most supers wins will no longer exist. Fleet compositions become more important. Planing and strategy become the key to winning battles, not who has the most supers to bring to the field.

Power blocks like the CFC would no longer be untouchable to groups without a comparable force. If you can field the maximum fleet size, you can have a fighting chance against a much bigger force, as most of them will be locked out.


You can have a great advantage as a defender in you key systems by having a defense fleet staged there, larger than what the enemy can jump in, making that key system, very hard to capture, unless they hit you while your fleet is out. again, planing and intel, more important than how many ships you have. On the flip side, a surprise attack on an undefended system would give the advantage to the attacker. tactics and espionage more important then how many ships you can field.

This idea is far from perfect, I am sure there are many scenarios I have not considered, but i believe it would shake things up in a good way.

Yes, that is a concern, but really, at the monument the CFC is untouchable, no other group can match even half their force. is that not even worse?

At least with this change there would be a cap, any force larger than the cap has little effect, allowing much smaller groups to at least compete. And yes, power blocks could just push the cap, locking out any opposition, but anyone would could meet that cap could do the same, taking the power away from the powerblocks. However, if they want fights, if they want PVP, then that strategy will not work.

This idea is bad, only when looking at it with a blob mentality. this is where the tactics come in. Planing, tactics, actual warfare, rather than just blobbing the hell out of everything. if you capture more space than you can defend without having to jump your super fleet back and forth across your space then you are leaving yourself open. If they are invading your home system, then your fleet is already there, they do not have to jump in.

Now say this did not stop them from jumping, but dumped them into a random system in the constellation once the target system was full. It would add an element of uncertainty to the jump mechanics. Fleet Commanders would have to actually plan invasions, with actual though into the makup of the fleet, rather than just massing the biggest fleet possible.

Keep in mind, with the limits in place there would be far more groups that could field a Maxed out fleet. Rather than having 2-3 power blocks controlling most of null, it would make room for smaller groups to compete, to a far greater extent then they can now. more groups being able to compete with the power blocks, means more conflict, which means more PVP. How is that not a good thing?

Sure this could result in the large power blocks simply breaking up into smaller fleets for an invasion, and hitting multiple systems at the same time. But really, how is that a bad thing? instead of one massive lag fest fight, you get several smaller enjoyable fights. MORE PVP, rather than a single lagfest.

So what if the power blocks still dominate with the new system, they dominate now, with much less fighting and effort, based on the simple fact that it takes to much work to put a fleet together large enough to hit them. With the limits in place a maxed fleet will be much easier to field. a much smaller group can hit a power block controlled system, and lock their reinforcements out, just as easily as they can do it to you. And keep in mind, this is not a permanent lock to the system, just a temporary, 30-60 minute lock out, you can still have escalation, you have at minimum of 30 minutes to put a counter fleet together before anyone else can enter the system, even have the gates, and cynos on separate timers. Capitals locked out, but a large subcap fleet can still get in.

I agree with you that there are a lot of holes in this idea, but calling it straight out dumb is narrow minded and stupid, what is dumb, is the system we have now. I really believe, despite all the other issues it could cause, it would create much more conflict, and fleet battles that are far more fun than we have now. We need to shake things up. Something has to be done.

If you do not like the idea fine, what do you propose? The fact remains that something has to be done to limit the power projection of the huge power block alliances. If not, we are going to see the death of null sec PVP. The CFC has grown stronger and stronger with their enemies getting weaker. the big fleet battles will soon be over, as nobody will be able to challenge the CFC.

Without some mechanic to stop the more ships wins, blob mechanics, this game is dead.

What is the alternative? let the CFC control the entirety of null sec completely eliminating all major conflict? In the real world that would be a great thing, world peace, but in a PVP game, that is the opposite of what we want.

Ur aware that there is not one node per system right?
at least focusing a fight allows CCP to reinforce the node, or better yet transfer it onto the super server thing. (forgive me if my terminology is off)

i havent been in many, but one TiDi'd fight is better than several TiDi'd fights with some area's u cant even enter because of bastardised gate mechanics.

u say the idea wont change the game much, but it will.


The game does not revolve around null sec. Move to a WH if u dnt like null sec.

I never said it would not change the game, It certainly would, But that is the point, it is time for a change, blob warfare is getting very stale. Something needs to change, the only way to stop the blob, to stop to who ever brings the most ships wins, is to invoke some sort of limit on the number of ships that you can bring. limits suck, but blob warfare sucks a lot more.

yes many TiDi fights, would be worse than one big one, but many fights with little to no TiDi, would be far better than one huge fight with max TiDi. And the problem with reinforcing the nodes is that they need several hours advanced notice to do it, it is not something that can be done on an as needed basis.

Yes, you are right that each node covers several systems, so make make the mechanics work based on the node rather than the system. or change the node asignments so that multiple systems in the same constellation are not on the same node. The idea is to force fleets to be small enough to have minimal TiDi in most fleet battles, and at the same time, have a max fleet size that deters the huge powerblocks from controlling everything.

As far as the CFC making PVP after they have concured null sec, yeah they might, at least for anyone inside there alliance, but if you know anything about their origins, that tells a different story.

Goonswarm was founded buy the Something Awful forums community. That communities primary focus for all MMO games is to cause as much crap, and ruin the game experience for as many others as possible. Every other game they play, the focus in on ruining the game, not making it better, on getting off on pissing off other gamers, not making games more fun. They will watch EVE be reduced to a ruin of a game, an laugh about it the whole time. that is what the SA community does. They did it in Startrek Online, they did it In LOTR, they will eventually do it here.

Even in EVE the primary focus of the CFC is to exploit game mechanics in a way that makes other players get so frustrated that nobody wants to fight them. It is their core focus, not PVP. Grid manipulation, abusing even the slightest oversight by the developers, to the point where it becomes game breaking. Anything they can do to mess with the system.

I have been a member of the SA forums for years, I could easily be a part of GSF, however I choose not too, because I actually like this game, and do not want to be a part of the group that seeks to destroy it.

Can you explain how changing from 'biggest blob of supers wins' to 'whoever gets into system first wins' is in any way a positive thing?

This is sigworthy.

Also, count me in on lowering clone costs. I just jumped up to upsilon. Ugh. That's a well-fit cruiser or a cheap Cyclone before you take implants into account at all.

Goons do not care about creating PVP for anyone outside there own alliance. They will keep there own people happy, and do every thing they can to make everyone else miserable.

I disagree that ur idea improves anything at all. Building more ships and socialising with more players is a good reason for winning the war. Just being the first one to get 1000 ppl in system is a **** reason to win anything.

Strategic gameplay is still gameplay. An interceptor race to key systems is crap.

So whats your idea?

Anyone can talk a lot of ****, but all you have done is dis my posts, while contributing absolutely nothing of your own.

Fine, you do not like my idea, the fact remains the current system is not working. The game IS going down hill. leaving null sec mechanics as they are is not an option if we want this game to survive.

Last year at this time it was common to see over 50,000 players logged in at peak times, now I barely see 20,000.

I love this game, but something big needs to change soon, or the only ones left playing will be the wormhole dwellers, and high sec mission runners, PVP will die, and EVE along with it.

Whatever, I was hoping to have an intelligent discussion on possible improvements for this game, but I guess I've come to the wrong place.

As I said several times already, you don't like my idea, fine, lets come up with an idea that WILL work.

This is the Features & Ideas forums, not general discussion. trolling here is far more pathetic than posting bad ideas.

The current system is not working, my idea may be bad, but I have yet to read anything better, and I have been playing for 6 years.