Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Moon goo is one of those aspects of EVE that has been the source of contention (and not to mention occasional threadnoughts) for quite some time. For those of you unfamiliar with moon mining, it essentially allows players and corporations to obtain a semi-passive income through the anchoring of Player Owned Stations (POS's) along with modules to harvest materials from resource rich moons. Moon mining has, for a long time, been the lifeblood of null sec conflict, often defining the preferred living quarters of large alliances who desire proximity to these resources. In low sec too, moon mining is a significant driver of conflict.

The system is not without issues, however. Moons are static and their outcome consistent. Large alliances able to capture these moons become exceedingly wealthy, allowing them to field stronger fleets to defend them and, consequently, those without moons become less competitive. Moons do not foster any kind of active gameplay in the PvE setting. In PvP, the aim of the attacker is to 'bash' the POS hosted by the moon (a process that many of you will be familiar with as mind drudgingly boring unless the defender decides to show up.

So the question asked here is should we phase out the old moon harvesting system in favour of more active PvE content? I will start the argument for doing so with a brief, but not flawless proposal:

I suggest to add new single and group play activities to the PvE repertoire to encourage player activity at the line member level. The spawning of special sites in lucrative regions of space, some of which can be completed solo and others requiring significant groups. These would complement the current anomaly and DED complex systems. Some DED complexes would also require revision to generate a better difficulty/reward ratio between them (the dreaded 9/10 complex for example that everyone hates due to travel). I also propose that new PvE sites for non-combat oriented players be available, since null sec in its current iteration is quite refractory to these players. I would like to see more non-combat play reach null sec to benefit content for all.

Of course this gives rise to a couple of issues: firstly that alliances require income to function. This could be facilitated by an alliance tax system that taxes corporation income in the same way as corporations tax individuals currently. This will still allow for all of the alliance level scheming, scamming and underhanded activities that we have grown to love. Another major issue is that if these new PvE features should be ISK generating, some mechanism to prevent inflation must be instituted.

The new PvE sites will allow player activity, together with quality of space to drive alliance income, rather than being primarily defined by quality of space.

A concern of mine is that such a system would degenerate null sec conflict, since it would effectively remove the traditional focal points of interest. This could, in part, be ameliorated by the new opportunities afforded by the new PvE content (the possibility of ganking PvE fleets) and also by the desire of groups to attack more lucrative space in earnest.

The issue of replacing the role of moon goo materials in the manufacturing industry can be very easily overcome by the new PvE activity.

So moon goo isn't perfect, but should we change it?
How do we ensure that null sec conflict is encouraged with this proposed system?
How do we address the significant issues this may cause to low sec power play?

Well that's my lunchtime musing for today. Always feel better after a good ramble! I'm always looking forward to hearing your opinions!

And dont forget... Active PVE (shooting red ex-crosses) is not and will never NEVER NEVER EVER be fun in eve online. Anomic, maybe something new, but after a week or two, everyone knows the perfect counter to kill those "agents". PVE is lock x, shoot, lock y, shoot, etc... passive pve > active pve, cuz we can do stuff thats actually fun while we gain ISK passivly.

When newspaper headlines and forum thread titles ask a question, the answer is invariably no.

Yes, passive income sources need to be replaced with active sources. Pilots doing things in space, even relatively boring things like ratting or mining, is far better than pilots playing WoT while waiting for a ping. Pilots doing things in spaces gives targets for small gangs to seek out and encourages a steady state of smaller scale content vice unexciting large-scale grinding.