EVE General Discussion

Replying to a Veers thread makes me feel sort of greasy, but since it's a discussion the community needs to have, here goes:

I oppose this change. Corp infiltration is a key part of what makes EVE, EVE. This change, coupled with the corp kick queue effectively end AWOXing as a playstyle, and not just in highsec. Yes, players will still be able to perform corp thefts and spying, but going on a murderous rampage will no longer be possible in highsec, and will be restricted to a one-off attack followed by a speedy boot in all other zones. These are not broken mechanics - they are mechanics which a large portion of the player base enjoy, either directly as participants or vicariously reading stories about them on these forums and various third party sites. They are a long standing part of our shared culture.

However- I can see the point that AWOXing is one of the factors which discourages joining player corps. I also agree that encouraging people to get out of NPC corps and interact meaningfully with other players is a worthwhile goal. If We are going to address the factors which keep people in NPC corps, I think that we would be remiss if we did not bring up the point of immunity to wardecs.

People stay in NPC corps because as solo players they have no significant disadvantages from doing so and because they are averse to the risks of joining player corps. With these changes we have significantly reduced the level of risk. To balance that we should reduce the advantages of NPC corps. Done right, we could see a mass exodus into player corps, and all the potential content that would lead to.

My suggestion- make faction militias the default NPC corps and limit time in starter "school" corps. That way, newbros would be channeled towards lowsec and chronic carebears would have to either join player corps or accept a more limited, more dangerous game. And wardeccers would experience a new golden age (reduce war fees too and we'll know you're still cool).

The problem is that most companies are so money hungry that they just give customers what they say they want rather than a god product. CCP mostly resisted being this way till recently.

Now we have safeties, CCP will get rid of high sec awoxing, and the game is getting new rigs purely aimed at helping miners not get bumped (which is stupid given that the only miners that can get bumped are the miners who alrady can't be arsed to be at the keyboard of use the 1000s of mods and tools the game already has). Meanwhile null keeps getting nerf (I'm still pissed at that ESS crap lol), wormholes get shafted and CCP displays the same kind of error filled thinking that created a lot of the mes sin the 1st place.

It's almost as is they don't WANT us to ever want to (or be financially able to) leave high sec at all...

I mean it's crazy, CCP is nerfing jump ranges to the point that B-R and Asakai battles will be much much less likly while at the same time nerfing people's abilty to be villains in a game that advertises villainy.. WTF is going on at CCP? Does their health insurance not cover testosterone injections?



At the end of the day, none one of it's a big deal as it's a game and there are (and will be) other games to play, it's just sad to see a company I like be so ham-fisted with a game I enjoy. They should know from experience by now that making the game safer doesn't work (the carebears won't like it any more becuase they are carebears and thus don't like anything, and the hard core players will hate it because it caters to carebears). Making the game MORE violent and sneaky is what they shold be doing.

Sure. However, where is the evidence form any sandbox game (let's not even limit this to EVE) that doing the things CCP is doing creates 'growth'? I'd feel different if anyone could point to a single instance of a niche IP going mainstream and the devloper making loads of cash.


But I've never seen it. I've seen developers take a niche product/IP and try to "mainsteam" it to make more money only to realize that it's a niche IP for a reason.

14 years ago, FASA Interactive (then owned by microsoft, MS has since closed FASAi down) tried to do that with the Battletech/mechwarrior IP. The went away from making mech sims like mechwarrior 3 and made mechwarrior 4 an 'action game'.

They succeeded in doing 2 things : Ticking off the core battletech fanbase while FAILING to draw in the casual FPS crowd they were looking for. Giant robots with weapons is a NICHE genre no matter how cool they are, any idiot could have seen that it would never appeal to the fast paced FPS types. This is a main reason why there is a 13 year gap between the launch of MW4 and the launch of the next MW title (Mechwarrior Online)

The futuristic "demi-gods" in space thing EVE online does is and will always be a niche as well. CCP an't try to DUST/LEGION/PHOENIX it up all they want, they can add as many safe features to EVE Online proper as they want, it's still be niche.

CCP's choices aren't "niche game income or mainstream game income", it's "niche game income or less income overall because your game will always be niche and never appeal to the mainstream unless you unicorn and ELF-atize it".

I will confess that I will miss sparing with corp mates on the fly. I know there is the duel system but it is messy and requires opening yourself up to outside corp duel request spam unless you keep going back and forth with your settings.

In my history I can't recall any Highsec Awoxing happening in the corps I was in, thefts yes but not awoxers. Maybe we were just lucky and our vetting process weeded out such types. I just don't see this change making much of an impact of getting players out of NPC corps. The ones I know are there for the Wardec shelter that they offer.

But over all this change is more annoying to me than harmful. It just adds more clicks to do what I used to do freely. But it does feel like another layer of useless bubble wrap is being added to help protect the less robust player. Or rather CCP is trying to blunt the tools used by some players to disrupt or harm other players. Making highsec a nicer, gentler place.

*Shrugs*

Very well said. I feel the same.

These little changes are the death knell of EVE Online, they are to me just nudges in the wrong direction. I take pride in how I've been able to protect my high sec corp from the fuckery of awoxxing, now there will be nothing to take pride in, the government game will now just do our work for us.

It's the wrong direction for us, the wrong direction for the game, the wrong direction for life as we know it! That's why I'm asking for your vote, lets go and take Washington back and...wait, what was I talking about again? Sorry, it's election season, I get confused

There were 3 main reasons that have deterred me from joining Highsec corps -

1. Awoxxing
2. Wardeccs
3. Theft

Even if CCP knocks off reason 1, I still think 2 and 3 are a pretty big deterrent to joining corps, and a good reason for many to stay in NPC/1 man corps.

OR people could figure out ways of doing things in a video game despite those things. This is where EVE is going wrong, it's no longer saying "well, figure it out" (unless you are a null sec logistics director lol), the game is slowly starting to say "we'll fix that for you so you don't have to strain a brain cell".

You combat awoxxing by having 1 set of ships/fits for solo pve and another (tanked to survive/fight back) for non-solo stuff . You avoid war decs by having an insta undock bookmark for every station in you constellation (especially your main agent), by watching local and by fitting to escape . You avoid theft by controlling who has access to what (I'n my corp we have a rule, "if it's expensive, keep it in a personal hanger not a corp hanger, if I need it I will ping you on jabber, if you arne't online to give it to me screw it, I'll get it later lol").

But that takes effort, and it seems a whole bunch of people don't want to make any effort in a hobby lke EVE. They want a 'game' like WoW. I think that's sad, because if you can't be arsed to put some thought into a game about thinking, why even bother to install?

Bingo.

CCP has correctly identified the existence of the problem only. That too many people are in NPC corps and they stay there for too long.

But they have, of course, incorrectly identified the cause of this.

It's not that player corps are unattractive. It's that NPC corps are entirely too attractive. They have too many benefits for not enough penalties.

The only actual penalty they have is POS use. Oh no, I don't get to use the single most pain-in-the-ass mechanic to ever exist in videogames, woe is me!

+1. Missions were boring, mining was boring, but being ganked made me upgrade from a trial.


None of those put me off, if anything they added new tiers of gameplay. But I'm in a corp with the folk who wardecced my old one nearly 6 years ago, one of whom still gleefully likes to remind me how I tried to fight him once in a ship with no mods fitted >.> Looking at that list, even if all of those things were addressed you'll probably be able to think of some more.

There is a clear need to improve the NPE and retention rates, but wrapping rookies in additional layers does nothing but delay the inevitable tantrum when they realise they can't control every aspect of their interraction with others. Honestly, dumbing down the non-consensual elements of gameplay won't make the risk-averse babbies suddenly turn into sociable players. They just want to farm in instance syle themepark areas, and I don't see why the rest of us should tolerate it. It's disgusting.

If CCP want to address the core issue that the majority of highsec residents are gibbering lunatics
Remove NPC corps
Remove Concord
Remove Highsec
Stick rookies in a starter system and don't let them out until they've killed 10 other rookies
Remove all forms of PVE and make all materials come from combat drops from other players.
Get rid of passive skilltraining. I want lootable SP too.

This would not surprise me if this happens. Just in the short time I've been playing this game, I've noticed the slow, steady march from HTFU to Happy Carebear Land.

When will devs of sandbox MMOs learn making your game more WoWish in a vain attempt to get more subs only destroys the game? You can't out WoW WoW, and there are a couple carebear friendly space MMOs in the pipeline. Why destroy what makes your game different? Will some folks leave EVE for one of the less harsh MMOs if EVE doesn't change? Probably, but all the people that only play this game because it is so harsh will leave.

Oh well, at least it seems corp theft will still be permitted.