Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's nice to see all these ideas being tossed around. Talking about this will hopefully lead to some forward movement on the stagnation issue that really has a strangle hold on the game. I think one thing people tend to forget is that good and bad ideas all come from the same place. This is hopefully a place to paint with a broad brush on potential solutions and fixes. Even a bad idea can lead to more critical thinking on the subject.

CCP seems to have painted themselves into a corner and the decay of the game is accelerating as a result. I'm not a fan of the term "power projection". It's a buzz term that gets the point across but I tend to think about the issue as stemming from all the ways mobility is achieved in EVE. So many mechanics to shorten travel times have created a situation where it is not hard to see why the game map feels so small. Mix that with a sov system that encourages organizations to be as big as possible because whoever wins the arms race of warm bodies in fleets or caps wins.

Remember how big eve felt as a new player? Before you had the skills for fast ships, jump drives and clones? I don't think the importance of Infomorph Psychology and the ability to set jump clones can be understated for how game changing it is for a player. And once it happens, there is no going back. Even for a solo player in high sec, it opens so many doors. Instead of adding skills to reduce the cooldown, it might be time to look at this mechanic as a factor in many of the core problems in the game right now.

Jump cloning in its current form allows for a ridiculous amount of mobility (ie power projection) on an individual level, not to mention when done as part of a coordinated staging with thousands of players. It's already been pointed out multiple times in this thread how this one game mechanic completely circumnavigates most changes to the game that would attempt to limit mobility of alliances/coalitions. The level of organization the average null entity has, as well as the size the coalitions, are well past the point where this one mechanic allows them to continually beat down the proverbial "little guy" trying to stake a claim in 0.0. This problem would remain if you deleted every jump capable ship in the game and needs to be addressed directly.

Speaking of jump capable ships, not much more needs to be said on how wrong it is that the largest, most powerful and most necessary ships (based on the current sov system) are the easiest to move quickly around the map en masse. I personally think changing structures to be less of an HP grind and make moving capitals more of a chore through a change to jump drive distances would do a lot to help. Capital doctrines have their place, but it has gotten to the point that they are too much firepower to be allowed to move so quickly around the map.

And logistics isn't hard... but it isn't fun or engaging either. It's able to be done in such a way to minimize the amount of people (but not accounts) involved and is almost impossible to interdict. I don't advocate anything as draconian as deleting jump freighters to fix this but something does need to be done. It's hard to come up with a solution because nobody who has joined the game post 2005?...2006? can really picture anything different. In my own experience I know of small groups of players who have moved out to NPC null and what two ships did they rely on...? JFs and carriers. The issue is I don't think some of my in game experiences would have happened without jump capable ships so it is hard to completely villainize them for their role in "easy" logistics. I don't think rolling back to the days of freighter escorts (way before my time so I have to plead ignorance) will do much for the simple reason that the rest of the game is very different. The days are gone where fleets of 100 were god-like, organizations were small and everyone was new to the game and low on SP. You'd have to roll back cap proliferation, blops and I don't know what all else just to make that old school style of logistics feasible.

I'd just like to add a couple of comments from a "liitle person" on soverign null and some ways to improve it based on some of the great ideas in the thread so far.

There is a lot of debate about logistics & the difficulty corporations and the pilots who do corporation specific logistics would face if jump freighters were nerfed. The solution (now removed) was to have NPC trade routes. This has been changed to a form of alchemy to allow for transforming racial goods from one type to another. I very strongly believe that the market shold be, as much as possible, built, stocked and priced by players and that artificial solutions should be avoided.

The original post states: " Miners were important to nullsec alliances because importing minerals wasn't practical ( no jumpfreighters or jumpbridges ). [...] Builders/Industrialist were important because again just simply importing everything from empire was not practical. This meant creating a safe environment so they can do their work. "

A lot of people are against the nerfing of jump freighters because in order to build T2 goods or to fuel POSes etc, you need to import feedstock from other regions. This means that being able to jump items in is vital to establishing a manufacturing base and beter local markets. The issue with this is that, due to the simplicity of jumping items in from Jita, local markets are significantly penalised as everything can be bought from one location far easier than it is to establish a production & market hub locally. Cirus will help a little in this regard, but it will still be simple to import items en mass from Jita.

I think that people need to look at what "soverign null" should mean. It doesn't mean that your corporation has to do all of the logistics if it does not want to (allthough it should be able to make that choice if it wishes).

I propose that anyone can see (either on map or in some other location) if they are allowed to dock at a soverign station. There should be sevral options for the owner of the station: - Allow docking by everyone; - Allow docking only for neutrals and above; Allow docking only for blues; - Allow docking only for corporation members; - Disallow docking for all members of a certain corporation (say an NPC corporation); - Blacklist characters/corporations; - Charge people for docking; Disallow access to certain station facilities (such as medical bays), while allowing docking.

If independents can see that we can dock at soverign stations, there will be a lot of neutral importation of goods into soverign null. For example, we may import Blood Raiders salvage into Guristas space so that rigs can be made. Trade, even with neutrals, should be possible within soverign null. Perhaps the soverign owner can levy a tax on items bought/sold in the station.

Ovbiously, any owner of a station would retain full control over their station and set docking permissions to whatever they please based upon their goals. If we are going to make changes to the value of the space (utilised space is better than empty space), we should also trade within soverign null and that trade should be able to be done by neutrals. NB. I am not suggesting for one moment that soverign holding corporations should be forced to accept trade with neutrals, just that we recieve in - game information about if we can trade/import/export from a particular station.

If we have better information about where we can dock, we will be able to start to develop local markets in soverign null and take away some of the burden from the logistics specialists of a corporation. Some corporations may wish to take advantage of this, some may not, but there is little downside in providing the information to everyone about where you can or cannot dock.

EVE is supposed to be a big game where you can make your way as a pirate, as a footsoldier in large wars, as a soverign commander, an industruialist, a trader, an explorer etc. Right now if you are not in a soverign holding corporation you are effectivly barred from soverign null space as there is no way to have any sort of economic interaction as there is a lack of information.

It may be that there are lots of downsides to corporations allowing neutral trade and that is fine. It may be that most corporations still refuse neutral trade and that is fine but what we need is information so that is the option of more economic interaction between different players, corporations and alliances. Right now, there is no way to tell if you can dock without physically visiting a station and that is unsatisfactory. More player/player interaction and information is a good thing.

You can still block access, if you read what I said you will see that I state, on multiple occasions, that you should be allowed to block access if you choose. All I am suggesting is that there is a way for neutrals to see (without being at the station in question) if they are allowed to dock.

You will also note that I am suggesting that people will want to encourage neutral trade as a way to supply their markets and manufacturing hubs with goods so that their corporation does not need to do all of the logistics if jump freighters are nerfed. Once again, there is no compulsion to do this; it just may provide an economic edge.

Additionally, station owners should be able to block access to certain facilities (manufacturing, medical bays etc) as well as levy taxes on trades at the same time as setting their docking policies (and that the docking policy & the facility access policy should allow the owner to discriminate which areas different types of pepole or corporations are given access to).

Smashing playstyles of individuals is nothing new in MMORPGs. If it is for the greater good, then it should be done. Yes, there are many who will always get that end of the little stick - I can't even count how many times that happened in other ones.

@Clones
I'd have to agree that being able to JC everywhere is extreme and imbalanced these days. I am not all too deep into that discussion just yet so I can't really say anything smart for the moment, but I do find that one should not just nerf JCs to the ground. There are times in 0.0 where you can't do anything alone and having a JC (or deathclone) to go elsewhere to do stuff is quite useful as it is a way to use the time. But yes, it is being abused as a tool to teleport all across EVE with ease.

I'm not going to wall-text now, but I hope something can be done about this SOV/Stagnation subject.
EVE is everything factor is sort of waning the more features I see elsewhere in other games/MMOGs. HTFU can be done by going to other games too.

In my opinion, the only problem I see is the (hopefully correction expression) fraternization, the buddy-buddy stuff that just come up. In another oldschool MMORPG nobody cares much about, that was a blunt no-go and never-gonna-happen thing. This does not mean the "big alliances" are big friends - no, we see conflicts - but I'm starting to find these "too big". The last time I looked, such war campaigns are just about pulling back and retreating because the others got simply too many caps and such. Also, I've seen a row things in EVE happen like in WoW, where the Alliance and the Horde ally yet again against some other moronic evil -> just bull. I'd hope that at least here we wouldn't see this "enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap here.

In a perfect world, I'd almost say "alliances mechanics need to go" and focus more on corporations, while at the same time making sure that corps cannot fraternize easily either. I'd love to see more of a confederations of feisty corps trying to get the upper hand of the EVE'verse than just mega alliances and their CEOs sipping wine with each other. Medium corps and such could lead more to having not just armies of capital ships either. I'd also hope more that capital ships would be very special vessels and flagships per Corporation than just another chunky box on the overview list. And with that must come a reset on several areas, though. Not just SOV.

But that's just me.

Most mechanics can be abused but that doesn't mean they aren't in the game.

I don't see the problem with giving independents information about where they can trade and giving corporations the tools to send signals to independents about needing trade. All there should be is an in game tool (on the map, market, station info etc.) that tells you if you can dock. There is no compulsion to allow people to dock and there is nothing to stop ganking, ransoms or anything else which is as it should be. If F20Y-X shows up as dockable, but every time you go there there are helish bubble and station camps you wont go there for long. If 5ZXX-K shows up as dockable, but has a 50% transaction tax you won't trade there.

The OP's main point is to nerf jump drives to:

1. Nerf military power projection. (I've never participated in soverign or alliance warfare so I have no opinion as to wether this is good or bad).

2. Encourage local markets in null to break the terther to empire (mass import/export of items from Jita), meaning that the economic development of local markets & regions of null. This never occurs as it is more cost effective to jump items in/out en mass.

The issues people have had with this are that 1. Logistics pilots in corporations will have a very hard time supplying goods needed and 2. Racial salvage, ice and T2 components means that any local manufacturing hub would be limited to specific racial items.

What I propose is that, instead of NPC trade routes or alchemy, players should stock those markets (noting that I am replying to the OP's suggestion of nerfing Jump Freighters). For some corporations (like yours), you won't allow docking rights. Some will use it to gank and ransom. Some will use it as a way of supplying their local markets. All that needs to happen is that there is a way to see if you can dock at a station without physically going there. There is no compulsion on anyone to do anything they don't want to.

There should be a way, if Jump Drives are to be nerfed, for independents to be able to stock markets. We all know the risk of null as an independent and that's part of the attraction of the game. I don't see why anyone would object to people being able to see if they can dock at a station remotley.

There are lots and lots of traders, haulers and smugglers in the game. They should be able to see (there is no compulsion on anyone to allow access) if you can dock at a station before you physically get there.

These mega coalitions need too grow a pair and make the sacrifice instead of expecting CCP too fix things which they ofc would moan about anyway ...

dangling a fraction of your wealth too achieve what exactly?

'THE' sacrifice would be all coalitions disbanding completely ... and encouraging many more independent entities too hold SOV and create non capital content .. not renters and pets ... no blue donuts ... stop the ridiculous capital hot drops that happen willy nilly ... amongst other things..

I agree with the main drive here. However (and correct me if I am taking you too literally here) but I do not think these changes need to take place at the same time.

For obvious reason you can't nerf PP first and hope the rest fix themselves organically until you patch them. But I do feel like there could be a resource and industry re-balance, then a sov rework and THEN a PP nerf. While it would likely be more painful than skipping to the finished iteration I sincerely doubt CCP or ANY game company could do this level of re-balancing across such a wide number of interdependent game system at once and not screw it up.

Timers and structures.

"Abandoned" sov systems should have 30 minute timers
"Maxed out" sov systems should have 12 hour timers

I can remember things too.


If you're winning the game - then enjoy it.
If you cant enjoy - then you're not winning.
Ever thought of it?