Wormholes

Don't get me wrong, my killboard is littered with mining barges, sleeper site running ships, hole rolling caps, and even the infamous PI Rorq. I will take any and all kills that present themselves. However, that being said, if the only PVP content in w-space is ganking PVE pilots with limited situation awareness that gets old pretty quick. My favorite moments in w-space were the fights we had with HK, LZHX, Ixtab, NoHo, Whale Girth, etc where both sides willfully put billions on the field, and both sides felt there was a chance for victory or defeat.


Snip, Please refrain from profanities quoting them and discussion of forum moderation- ISD Atomic Dove

Feel like it's a mixture of a good deal of what OPs have already said. They key is more and smaller groups.

1: Content Creators - No WH group is brimming with scanners/scouts/FCs/logisticians. Each has a few, the rest remain relatively casual and live in w-space for the quality of the kills and the nature of the space. If these people wanted to split off and form their own groups they would already have done so (several have, most don't fancy that amount of ballbreaking graft every time they log in).

2: Garbage POSes - Thefts almost killed us several times over, from C3 home to C2/C4 home, from 5 members to 30. The only reason to pick up the pieces with the same group is meta (your friends, your vision, your desire to make a name for yourselves or say fuckyou to the thieves).

3: Self-Imposed Limits - What does cause a corp/alliance to seek to grow past 200/300/400 members? I don't buy the argument that they must, lest they fear 'the blob'. Groups this size are few and far between. IMHO it's not even mainly risk aversion (who would steal from/attempt to burn HK?) instead I'd refer to #1. A corp missing a few key members quickly becomes part of someone else's corp so the casuals can stay casual and still have something to do. We saw a great deal of it this past summer, even we had several corps looking to join us due to missing CEO's/'the one guy that scanned got married'/chunks of their memberbase moved to null.

In the end we have to be careful what we wish for. Either we accept that most groups will follow the cycle of begin/grow/move up/burn out/move out and the failures will litter w-space with their dead sticks - those that couldn't motivate their members to reach into their own wallets or rat for the group to recoup theft losses, or even, in the end, just log-in. Or we're saying that something has fundamentally changed and the old style evolution of w-space groups is no longer possible.

While your points are kind-of valid, you're forgetting eve is a game of alts. Even CCP knows that, they're advertising the power of two on your account management page. If you're a single pilot, you need friends, or, if you are solo, you need alts. That's the way eve has always been.

There are things you can and things you can't do. Turning eve into a cuddly wuddly mmo where if your ship gets blown up you respawn in a station, in the same ship, or where a ship can fit multiple roles very well - scanner, PvE, PvP, hauler, even with things like mobile depots, is a step in the wrong direction.

TL;DR
Get alts or friends, and the game will be more fun. It's you vs. the world, and it seems to go a lot better if there's a lot of you's or you+friends.

A few reminders to keep this thread on topic and productive:


I have removed a few rule breaking posts as a result.

It's not so much about CCP kissing our collective derrieres to make us "happy".

CCP is going to do what the hell they want, when the hell they want, and damn the consequences because W-space residents don't occupy enough of a bloc that is willing to unsub enmasse and hit CCP where it really hurts. The wallet.

Hyperion fulfilled it's purpose, it shook up W-space in ways that we did want, and in ways we didn't want. CCP impacted W-Space most significantly with the changes to Incursions, essentially catering hand and foot to the PvE neckbeards. CCP made Incursions more convenient and consistently more profitable than they have been in a couple of years. Why would bears put significant assets, risk losing expensive ships all the time, and deal with the hassle of setting up, maintaining, and fueling POSes when they can fly around in blingy ships in Hisec and brag about their DPS like WoW raiding dropouts? (As if it really matters.)

I would prefer benign neglect to active integration of features that undermine and detract from our chosen playstyle.

There are always going to be the big corporations, if it's not Lazerhawks or Hard Knocks, it'll be someone else that is the "Dirty Dirty Blobbers" that everyone is jelly about and hates on because they're on top and have a good teamwork. There is nothing we can really do to make W-space more attractive because the underlying reasons to live out here have been sabotaged by CCP's changes elsewhere in the game.

It's pretty safe to say that we play Eve because of the people we know. For the last two years we've been running around kicking each other in the balls with invasions. It's not a great strategy to keep people around, but what are you supposed to do when that smack-talk gets a little too personal? It's not risky and exciting if everyone agrees to not invade and burn each other out. There definitely needs to be consequences for unacceptable behavior.

We choose to live in W-space because it's profitable and it allows us to kill each other in really expensive ships in a degree of freedom unsupportable elsewhere in New Eden.

Right now it's easier to go make money shooting Sansha in Hisec than it is to run anoms in W-space. Most people want to logically maximize what they like to do and avoid things that are needlessly banal and boring.

CCP's idea of making something interesting and challenging is to make it needlessly hard for what appears to be only for complexities sake.

People will flock back to W-space when the hassle of living out here is worth the risk and annoyance. Right now it's not.

W-space has maximum risk.

W-space should have maximum reward. Full stop.

What can players do to reignite the love for Wspace?

That cannot be the signle ultimate solution, but I think what we do in my corp is a good example that some people could follow. 6 month ago we were highsec carebears. We took a little over 2 month to teach our group about basic pvp, scanning and wormhole mechanics, as well as skilling. Then we moved to a C4>C4 and lived there 4month, learned the ropes, improved as a group, make money and feel the environment of wormholes in general. Three weeks ago we proceeded to leave our C4, and after a few logistical issues, Bob offered us the exact C5>C5 we were looking for.

And we totally love wormhole space and the adventures we have here. We may have the newbie syndrome, as we are far from experienced compared to most wormhole groups, but still our current situation is very appreciated by us as a group. We could make a lot more money, we could have more PvP, we could be way better at it. And we are trying to go that way.

I think what you guys in big and old corp and alliances miss that feeling: you guys already make mad isk, you already know the best way to find fights and ganks, you already have a sufficient playerbase, with enough skills to have super efficient fleet most of the time. You already can crush anyone like my corporation, you just have to decide it. You do not have much challenge to overcome. You are bored of you former love. And Wspace in general is not as lively as it could, so you miss lesser entities to fight. You lack stuff to achieve, you lack equally strong rivals. And finally you seem to lack a bigger goal, something you have not yet achieved that could drive motivation in your group. I feel it is very important to have a greater goal for a group. A next mountain to climb collectively. If you dont, people will start to go back home, and leave you alone and bored at the top of your already climbed mountain.

Me and some corpmates could have join one of these groups, and enjoy the protection that comes with the membership of such a group, enjoy the knowledge, the skill and organization, and the big income opportunity. But I honestly think that if I had, I would be bored of wspace by now, and I would not have learn so much, because I would not have any need to. No need to learn to FC if I have an already really good one in my corp. No need to learn how to farm efficiently if I already have people letting me join perfectly run cap escalations with really clear and precise explanation on what to do when.

Finally, we feel that a fleet size of 15 is perfect for a good pvp experience, and still having a lot of different kind of engagement open. We are a single timezone group, and to have regularly 15 people in fleet, you do not need to have more than 30 active players in you group which roughly equate to less than 100chars in corp.

Being more is too much according to me. If you have more than 30 active people, you will start to have a lot of people that do not know each other in the group. You will start to meet groups that just dont have the number to fight you. You will waste some potential, as you only need one or two FC per group, one or two skilled scouts/tackler etc.

It is not reallistic to ask bigger groups to split. But I think it is possible for smaller group around the size I mentioned to compete with them at some level. If we have enough "medium" groups like this in wspace it could be really more interesting to live in wspace for everyone.

And it does not take that much to have this. Helping people to form new groups, making a complete guide/wiki with how to run pve fleets, how to manage group income, pos living, corp security. Show that a group of noob with only a few experienced players willing to lead a bit is able with a bit of work to become a respectable wormhole entity. I think even without taking people by the hand, just making known that you do not have to join the top dogs to have a nice experience in wormhole space, and that you do not need to be 300 to live in C5. You do not even need to be able to run cap escalations to make decent money as a group etc. Encouraging people to try, and being generally helpful with wormhole newcomers is the way to go.

Just as a conclusion: early during our C4 days we met a fleet of ~15 guys in T2/3 cruisers from a bigger/older wormhole entity. We engaged with our 8-10 man battlecruiser and t1logi gang, and got obliterated, but the guys warmly congratulated us and gave us a bit of isk as a wormhole welcoming. Even if we lost, and monetary wise it was hurtful at that time for us, we felt respected and encouraged to keep fighting. This is the right kind of attitude to have if you want to have people to fight with.


For the low class wormholes, I just know that a group with ~10 people can have a very nice experience living in a hole with a C3 or C4 static. And all of this doable in battlecruiser. Wspace may be really hard for solo players or 3-4 man corps, but with a little bit of organization, it seems perfectly fine to me for a 6+ man group to live in wspace with such statics.

Finally if you just play eve for the rewards, run incursions. You will die of boredom after two weeks, and realize that this game is not really about isk. In my opinion, living in C4 was a incredible gaming experience compared to running incursions, even if I made much less money there.

Yes, it was an interesting thread, yes it concerned Wormhole play. That said, I would hardly call moving it to Crime & Punishment 'burying', as that part of the forum is at least just as active as the Wormhole section, if not more. If the OP of that thread did not want it to get moved or at least severely edited, he should not have included the killmails.
If you think the forum rules on posting killmails are somehow wrong or obsolete, please feel free to post a proposal for change of those rules in the Features & Ideas Discussion part of the forum, keeping you proposal firmly away from discussing (specific) forum moderation.
CCL does not make the rules, we enforce them.

On that note, if CCP were to post a thread about a fight containing killmails in the OP and it would not have been posted in C&P (or in CCP's case, also not in EVE Information Portal), it would just as well get moved by me. Or have those killmail links removed.

I have written this rather uncommon explanation as I have witnessed some antagonism against forum moderation in the Wormhole section of the forum lately, quite often originating from posters having only a marginal understanding of the forum rules.
Please do not continue discussing forum moderation in this thread, or on any part of the forum. If you are perceiving a problem with ISD behaviour on the forum or are disagreeing with the way (your) posts are being moderated, please feel free to read the CCP policies and follow the procedure found under the header 'Complaints'.


Besides, next time I see any of you in W-space while logged in with my playing main, I will do my utmost best to sacrifice you to Bob. Or, of course, die trying....

CCP are about as good at wormhole PR as they are at generating Revenant killmails

I dont see them screw up isk making in incursion, so not really, no..