Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello Devs, I've been playing this game for a few years now. I am not the oldest player by any streach of the imagination, but having quite a few years under the belt I feel i am quallified to make a fair accessment of the current state of the game.

Now I'll start by warning that this will be a lenghty text so bear with me as I address several points in depth. Not too deeply as to become a boring read but enough to explain what needs to be known.

I'll also add that to all the other players who might read and start replying with either I love this or I hate this. I don't care about your opinions. I don't want to try and sound like an ******* here but this isn't really going to be me discussing with you the finer points of EVE. This is merely aimed as feedback to CCP, so they can hear what I and many other players feel and why it is causing problems to the game. Obviously I will not be saying what is working well or within acceptable levels, that needs no change after all, I'll merely go over the negatives, explain why they are negatives, how they are affecting the game.

Now with that out of the way I'll start with mining which has been an hot topic for longer than I have been playing EVE.

Mining has changed over the years I've played. I started the game as a miner and eventually switched to mission runner... Well, switched isn't exactly the right word as I pretty much tried a bit of everything. When one is new in EVE they want to see everything. Later on I did completly switched to mission running/ratting cause it was straight more rewarding. Boredom is not part of the equasion here. To some people it's boring mining but to others it's not thus that is a non issue.

The problem started with nerfs. While over the years there has been several nerfs I'll only go over the most simple and recent to the hulk which far reduced the minning capacity of minerals. It lost lot of bonus quantity extra minerals per cycle to gain quicker cycles. Now this did improve it's ice mining capacities, but it is untrue that the hulk mines more, as far as minerals are concerned the quantity per minute has drasticly decreased and it was blindingly obvious to see once the changes happened. Even more, I had the opportunity of using fitting tools to test out the outputs of the before and after and the nerf was mind staggering.

Now it's not that CCP had it wrong with going for Cycle over quantity, it gives a uniform bonus to both ice and mineral mining, that is good, but the cycle bonus should have been far superior to what it was given.

Next comes the changes to refining. CCP did do a good thing here in making all the batches be the same quantities. It simplifies things a lot and certainly goes a great lenght to help with maths on compressing ore/ice. However CCP introduced the much dreaded and hanted no refining without losses. To an extent this needed not to be a problem, had CCP not changed that in order to refine the ore and get a similar value to what was before (similar but lower so slightly nerf yet again) a player has to have each individual ore refining skill at 5 and the best refining implant. This not only meant that the vast majority of miners had a second nerf on top of the first in the "ship rebalancing", but that also they were deliberatly hurting the player base that has been hurt the most at least since I started playing.

Let's not forget here that latelly all changes have either been in a way that things make more sense. Like all tier 1 ships are race based, like battlecruisers and destroyers, leaving the tier 2 to be general for all races. Or make things easier to use. Like less requirements to use ships or modules. Yet mining... More specificly refining, has a lot more requirements. Something that takes several months to complete, close to an year I belive.

All of this created even more problems to all miners who liked to mine but at every expansion they see their activity nerfed and more difficult when it's already the lowest paid job, requires more accounts to properly work since you need mining, hauling and bonus awarding... Let's also not forget that not only a single mining account makes a lot less than a rating account, but the ratting account gets the money immediatly. They kill the rats and 20 minutes later the money is there. The miner has to drag his haul to a station, refine it and the sell it there or drag it to major selling point. this is more tricky for those living in null sec. But anyway, the point is that not only their time is worth a lot less money, but it doesn't brings immediate profits.

Now what other problems are there with mining? Well for starters the asteroids are small, they don't last long enough because they have such low amounts of materials, even in null sec. This is a problem. A miner is supposed to park on the belt and just be there happly mining and dealing with any rats that show up. The low durabillity of asteroids means that the miner can't sit quietly in his spot doing his thing, he has to contantly move from asteroid to asteroid, from belt to belt. It creates a lot of unnecessary busywork, much comparable to fetch quests in MMORPGs which no one likes and are entirely unnecessary.

By the same token the ice was drasticly reduced, belt respawn mechanics are pretty bad, it creates only a shortage of materials and an increase in prices that has no necessity as well as a fight for the belts in high sec which again makes no sense.

(Continued on the next post... I'd really appreciate if everyone refrained to commenting before I finish everything.

C-c-combo breaker!

Now on to research. There are two major problems with research so fortunatly this will go quickly.

The first is related to the costs of research. While not so high, it doesn't makes sense that you pay for researching in your own POs or null sec station unless the owner sets a tax you pay him. Again, you are already paying for your own stuff and fuel/costs. There is no sense to pay CCP an arbitrary value here... As for the costs itself for say, high/low sec stations. Those seem mostly fine.

The second is a major problem that CCP created and seems unwilling to reverse. It has to do with the T2 BP monopoly.

As we all know, in order to get a T2 blueprint, first a player must have an original T1, then he has to make a copy of it and then try to upgrade the copy to tier 2. This is time consuming and costly. Not by a small amoount either.

However there are some players whom CCP gifted with T2 original blueprints. These players do not need to constantly upgrade copies of T1 blueprints to T2. They do not spend any isks at all. They do lose lose any time at all to do it... These players are given by CCP the monopoly of T2 material because they can mass produce easily and at much cheaper prices... This is a real problem. It's as much of a problem as pay to win in a game... No player should be given an unfair advantage over another. All players should have the same access to the same things. This also creates the image that CCP very clearly beneficts players or corporations or alliances which they like in some way and this is not a thing you want associated with your game.

There we go, quick on the research department as I promissed, but of course the situation is far to serious to ignore. Now we move on to the wormholes and to a degree, null sec interaction.

Now the first thing is that wormholes are not a good place. They are as unsafe as you'll ever be since there is no local. it's a bother to have to constantly scan. No moons (although I understand why). No constant anomalies and thus no steady isk income. If anything, they are better money than living in high sec for those who don't have null sec options. They are a huge security risk but with decent enough rewards.

Now where does the problem starts?.. Well the amount of worholes opening is much higher since cryus. People who already lived in unsafe conditions now have to deal with more and more enemies roaming their wormholes. Trying to keep them closed is a nearly impossible chore. To an extent this also affected adversly null sec as the places where people rat are constantly having to deal with trying to close wormholes or just going yet another day without ratting for fear of a possible gank... this cripples the economy of null sec to a small degree and it severely cripples the economy of wormhole corporations who fleed high sec for it's incredible low income.

The problem then took an even more drastic proportion with the lastest version as the new wormhole type was introduced. It allows only for frigates, destroyers and heavy interdictors to pass through. It has a huge mass and it regenerates mass lasting for 18 hours. this effecively means that any wormhole or any null sec with such a wormhole active will not have any other choice but suspend it's actions for 18 hours. Again, very bad for null sec. Disastrous for people who live in wormhole space.

More and more wormholes and especially wormholes that you can't do anything about has already had a severe impact in people living in wormholes as many corps just opted to abandon them since it was no longer worth it. Big wormhole corps living in C5 and C6 will not have any problems, but let's not illude ourselfs here. The wormholes were aimed primarely at small corps, from 1 or 2 members to just a few whoch had no way of going into null for having no logistics capacities or even possibly the kind of isks to pay for rents. These people are now being stripped of their livelyhood in EVE.

And that was it for wormholes. Still a few topics left so let's continue with logistics.

Logistics are usually a problem, not so much for big alliances because they are well organised and they got more than enough resources to spend in order to get what they need done.

The problem hits small corps hard. They have few logistics ships, cynos are a problem if the system they are renting is far away from high sec and the costs are high.

As I refered previously, the increase in fuel costs due to the changes to ice belts and worst, ships requiring more fuel to jump small corps have taken a huge blow to their economy and struggle to keep up with the losses. We are talking about needing to go to high sec regularly to get fuel for POS, Buying the gfuels for the jump ships, bring ships and material.

Supposedly CCP wanted to aim this at the big alliances, to make their capital fleets less mobile so that it wasn't as easy to deploy them in different theaters as the need arouse. The problem lies with such alliances actually having huge stockpiles and the kind of isks to sink into having their fleet entirely mobile... Never has been a problem with a lack of fuel to move their ships. If anything some big alliances ened up losing too much stuff in the war and couldn't recover from the asset loss but fuel was never a problem... In reallity only the small corps who already have a hard time making a living are affected by having their logistics even more limited and their already small profits even smaller making it harder for them to grow... This wa completly unnecessary and detrimental to the game. Many players preferd to just stop playing. They don't want big alliances and CTAs/monthly required kills. They don't want to b in high sec where there is no money to be made and they don't like the way wormholes work, even more now that they are an absolute mess. So what do they do'? Well they quit, plain and simple.

(continued on the next post...)

I haven't seen any rage, so I don't think it's a rant. However I do think some of it is misinformed/wrong, but she's not done yet so I can't give it a true score for merit

Indeed...

he just keeps going and going and going.....


1 word......wordpress

2 more words.....hosted site

Combine them lol....bit long for here chief.

So, how can this change? What change could possibly turn this game back on track and bring people back or at very stop the flood gates? Well The following sugestions are by no means sure fire ways to do it. I cannot forsee the future but I do belive they are sound improvements that would bring the game back to a much more enjoyable state for everyone.

Let's start by buffing further the cycle on mining ships, make them better since they have been gettng the short end of the stick. At very least have the mining in pair with before the most recent nerfs.

Let's go back on the huge refining requirement too. Never ask for implant and 5 level skills. 4 level skills were perfect and no implants needed.

Let's make all ice have much more material and let's have asteroids have a lot more material. One hulk should take a couple hours to completly mine a single asteroid or ice. Their job is to sit there and mine, not be changing lasers every half a second (yes a bit of exageration to once again dfrive the poit across).

We can reduce the number of structes in a POS to gain the full bonus. There is no need to have a huge amount. Just a few. As it is, it's just overkill.

Reducing costs for manufacture are a priority to revitalise industry. By he same token on POS it should be free and on player owned stations it should also be free (except of any tax set by the owner).

Same thing for research in POS case and player owned stations.

End the T2 monopoly by either having original T2 BPs or sale on the market in unlimited numbers just like the T1. Or remove the T2 original BPs from those who have it... I prefer the first option as it also doesn't seems fair to just go and take it away from them but the truth remians that the monopoly is unfair and must be put to an end.

Cut down the wormholes openings. Remove the last type of wormholes introduced. People should be able to protect their system, be it null sec or wormhole space.

Reduce the fuel ships need to jump. It is just too penalising for small corps and completly ineffective against the big alliances which was the intended target. Instead try to figure a new way which will only affect big corps but have no impact on small corps. unfortunatly how to do it I have no ideas still, that last change should be undone.

Change how plex works! It is clearly the PLEX prices are one of the main factors, along with the lack of freedom to drive people away from the game. PLEX needs to have a fixed price and by my estimates no higher than 500 million (even that is a tad high for people living in high sec). Now I know that because of the way market works, the first one to put the PLEX at 500 million is going to sell all before the next can sell unless they start lowring and then there is the possibillity of the PLEX starting losing valor and that becoming a problem.... SO here is how I propose a change. Whenever a player buys a plex with money he gets the items on his inventory. He can sell them in any station to the NPCs only for the price of 500 millions and thus he always gets his 500 millions. On the other hand that PLEX becomes available for any player to buy from any NPC in any station at the price of 500 million. Thus PLEX gets a fixed and more fair price being the only item working differently in the market. It doesn't matters where it sells, it's onyl limited by availabillity but that has never been a problem and it hardly ever will with the sheer number being bought and sold every day.

Make high sec truly high sec. Stealing or or turning cans, even salvaging something that is not your immediatly gets concord on you. In high sec, except where there is wars no ship can be instantly blown. If a ship is to be blown it immediatly gets a buff from a concord ship that immediatly appears and makes it invunerable for a short time always leaving it at least at 1 hull left. This buff is temporary and meanwhile concord shows up and starts repairing the ship, breaking locks on enemy ships and so on. the idea is not that it makes it impossible to gank someone, but that it makes it expensive to do so. Ganking in high sec should only be a resort that happens when you really want to get back at someone no matter the costs and not something to do for fun or profitable. if you want to gank for fun and profit, there is low sec and null sec... Missions cannot be entered except by the owner and those in fleet (except those who are on war who can still probe and enter). Create ways to make true PVP possible where no outside intervention is allowed, much like alliance tournaments are run. This way we can start playing the way we want and have actual meaningful PVP rather than playing ganking simulator 2014.

And that it from me. Probably a few more things that could have been said here and there but there is only so much I can remember when I'm posting something this long.

Fly safe.

I've read most of it. It's basically a huge troll.

Many details and "problem mechanics" that are listed are factually incorrect. So many in fact that it would take far too much time and effort to point them out and rebut them.

And parts of it do smack of ranting (you don't need rage to rant... just a theme and a hammer).