Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Fozzie, if you are still reading this thread, please fix Null Ore Anomalies.

I mentioned it in Eve Vegas and you blew it off, but it's still an issue :)

Localized mineral supply would benefit everyone- the producers in null, the roaming gankers looking for people to kill, etc.

lol another HVAC service guy. I wonder how many of us there are in game?

Most of us want 'occupational sov', yet its difficult to find a way to pull this off that everyone can appreciate.
So lets keep most of todays mechanics in place but change it up a wee bit.

-an alliance drops down SBU's. They take a short time to online (say, an hour).
-after they online, the outpost/ihub are immediately ready to be attacked and set into the first reinforcement timer.
- the reinforcement timer can be up to 2 or more days like it is now.

Now here's where it gets different:
- after the 2 or so days, the outpost/ihub comes out of reinforce and can again be attacked.
- the attacking alliance has a week to plan and make its next attack. the outpost/ihub cannot be repped until after this time.
- the next attack can be made any day, no earlier than the time in which the reinforcement timer came out (ie every day at 2100 hours or whatever). This will account for timezone inhabitants.

why a week? Perhaps this is a bit long. Or too short even. But the point is, it makes it pointless for a blob to form to defend. The real defenders will be the folks that live there and can respond. The attacker has the freedom to make a meaningful attack and fight against the systems REAL inhabitants, not some blob of 1000 scrubs that formed 2 regions away. This could also set the stage for feigning attacks at other points of an enemies borders.

Having all this time, including the wait time for reinforcement timers, should also appeal to those who are afraid to give up timers lest their stuff gets trapped in a station. You will have LOTS of time to move.

On hotly contested systems you could literally have daily sieges with an attacking fleet trying to successfully reinforce the system to the next timer. The defenders must hold out for the entire reinforcement period.

Now, all this being said, a blob can still be formed to attack. So let's say this happens, what's next for the original inhabitants?

Well, if they are stronger than whoever moves into the system they just lost, they should be able to mount their own attack to take it back. They will then have all the same advantages the original attackers had.

This is pretty much a rough idea. Most of my other ideas where for a sov system that had no timers at all and would allow for systems to be ping-ponged on a daily basis, which, is not ideal for most.

Whatever CCP does, it needs to shake null to its very core. I'm expecting, and literally insisting that whatever CCP does had better cause untold level of chaos. They are really going to have to break null apart before it can be fixed. The sooner the better.

One famous expression, is this:
If you can't beat them, join them.

All things being equal, a larger group will always win against a smaller one.
Sure, it is easy to point out that all things are not equal, some players have more talents, better skills, or simply better ships.
But the simple fact is, a larger group has more chances to have the balance of players they need to overcome a smaller group.

So what happens? Players are not stupid, so they join larger groups.
There is NO reason why they should not.

And THAT is the problem.
There should be a reason, not to join a larger group.
We are missing an important balancing aspect, which is resulting in the emergence of groups that are simply too big to lose.

We have kill logs for every ship loss, so noone needs to trust their alliance mates, the game makes a record of every action so we can have perfect accountability on demand.
Nothing promotes growth of group size more than this.

What does this mean?
With perfect automated accountability, we don't actually form the social bonds of trust beyond a superficial level. Except for an alliance or corp name, we often don't know many of the other players we fight beside.
We don't have great leaders, we have accountants who balance the books, so everyone is treated fairly.

This artificial capacity for trust, is what makes the big alliances possible.
And that, sadly, is what makes smaller groups DOA in an encounter against them, predictably often enough.

If you want smaller groups to rise, restore the natural human limitations present in other areas of life.
Destroy the automated capacity for trust.
Without that, the big alliances cannot remain stable, and will implode.

Destabilize the large alliances.

Make trust a meta-game element, not an automated function based off of easily verifiable kill mails or other activity logs.

Perfect accountability is the backbone of these large alliances. Without this they cannot remain stable.

What if instead of trying to change the mechanics around to force a specific type of game play or group size or fighting mechanic we just remove the incentive to own large areas of unused space? I mean we could discuss a million different ways to do this but just conceptually make it so that space needs to get used and not necessarily just by the sov holders.

Please make this thread a sticky; it deserves it since it's an ongoing game balance discussion and directly relevant to how things will be changing in the future.