EVE General Discussion

The analogy doesn't quite apply. EVE is not a piece of art we are all standing around and admiring.. it is a shared experience that we as players have a profound effect on and change.

CCP should never go overboard and "design by committee", but CCP also shouldn't operate in a vacuum with zero player input. We have at least one very good example of CCP completely ignoring the playerbase and producing game changes that end up putting their core business at risk. It's a fine balance.

To chime in here, what people think the CSM does in a lot of ways is silly.
Players are not game designers.
They can crunch down the results and find the flaws but going along and trying to redesign things (like most of my pipe dream Features and Ideas threads ) is a bit like questioning a surgeon because you use a few herbs to smell nice at home, while calling it aroma therapy.

EVE is a moving target. A primary goal of rebalancing should be all ships in a class seeing something like equal use. purchase and destruction. EVE players are moving targets, and there are thousands of us. When Tengus reign supreme among the T3s, or when Drakes become the weapon of choice, CCP should act to make other options more attractive.

Why have all those ships if only some see a lot of action?

Worry when CCP stops rebalancing.

Balance for whom?

Who are CCP staff thinking about, when they set out to "balance" the game?

Are we to assume that all Eve players are equal, and that we are all "in this together"?

If so, then there is only one kind of balance. If not, balance for whom?

To give an example of why a curious person might doubt that Eve is the same for everyone, consider the latest dev blog regarding the Sov Null changes.

I was only half way interested, because I do FW and generally bear it up in Empire space. Sov Null is closed to me because I don't want to:

a. Rent space from older players, paying for them to play. Mine rocks to pay rent.
b. Do PVE until blobbed.
c. Do PVP until blobbed.
d. Sit in station spinning a shiny ship and chatting about its theoretical stats if it were not to be blobbed.
e. Subjugate myself to the lords of some established Null corp (see choice a.).

But anyway, I had heard that Sov Null was being "rebalanced" to make it more interesting. That's good, I thought, because getting blobbed or working for the special friends of CCP sounds tedious.

Now that I read the dev blog explaining the changes, I understand with clarity that this has nothing to do with me, or any of the other suckers who pay subscriptions to pay the wages of CCP staff. The "rebalancing" of Sov Null is aimed squarely at the gameplay of the established lords of Null. The special friends of CCP, who are completely secure in their tenures, and who lobby for the sandbox rules to protect them in their tenure. With great effect, I may add.

This is not a complaint: I have long since understood that Sov Null is all about the special friends of CCP staff, and has nothing to do with the rest of us. My point here is that the entire "rebalance" is concerned with THEIR game, their Eve. It has zip to do with the rest of us.

Look at it this way: the only possible way the new changes in Sov Null can ever concern your gameplay is if you become a lord of a Sov Null alliance. If you are a minion of those lords, the changes will affect what you are told to do. Your actual game play options (being told what to do) don't actually change.

So, in order to enjoy the great new features, you need to become a so null lord. How to do that? The best way is clearly to have started playing a long time ago, and to be drinking buddies with CCP staff. How do we know this?

BECAUSE THE SAME PEOPLE ARE NULL LORDS WHO WERE NULL LORDS SINCE FOREVER.

IT DOESN'T CHANGE.

The only way to accept the reality of Eve, paying subscriptions and yet to keep a smile, is to accept that new players are destined for FW, high sec bearing, or servitude under the existing null lords. Taking it as this set of games, each with its own charms, makes it understandable and acceptable.

If.... IF... someone was serious about changing Eve and making it one game for everybody, the clear aim would be to call time on the old lords and allow new players to overcome the systematic bias that favours the friends of CCP staff. To do that, you'd want to watch the staff pretty closely, and get rid of the ones who go drinking with players.

Now, I am not suggesting that would be a good plan. I'm just saying, Eve is what it is, and that is a very caste based artificial "sandbox", where the rules are constantly changed to ensure the caste system remains in place.

The next iteration of sov null warfare will be afk spam - you spam afk campers to get system indices down, so you can take systems. Soon, instead of structure grinds, you'll be called on cloaking camping duty. And there will be no "rl emergency" excuse, since you don't actually have to be there.

Here's how balancing works in any MMO.


Imagine juggling racoons. Now those raccoons want to maul each other. While you're doing this, a crowd of children watching you are telling you how terrible you are and how much they hate your juggling act.

Too rushed? You gotta be kidding. It's taken over 2 years to do the big ship re-balance, and it isn't even complete yet.

Balance changes here are slow as molasses compared other competitive games like LoL.

It's an iterative process to balance so many factors against each other, and any number of new things can upset that balance. The only constant is change. Get used to it.

yeah it's not like LoL has just copied another game (it totally is)

Also in dota you play a 30-60 min matches so you play out more fights and after every rebalance the new "balance" becomes stale pretty quick

If people lose indicies because of afk cloakers, they didn't deserve the space in the first place.

Indicies do not fall in moments. They are lost by inactivity over time. So, yes, if you huddle in your station too afraid of the scary AFK camper to go out and mine/rat for days at a time, you will lose your indicies, and under the new system, this will make your space easier to take.

Which is how it should be - as my grandfather would have said, **** or get off the pot.