Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Disclaimer: This is a direct C&P of a post I made on the r/eve subreddit 2 weeks ago. Due to the nature of reddit (and the controversy that was dominating the front page at the time) it never gained enough upvotes early enough to ever make it past the 2nd page. So I figured I'd post it here instead.

So I've been watching this sub for the past month or so now and just watched part of the roundtable that was just aired on twitch.

Something someone said (not sure who) really resonated with me but the majority of the people just glossed over it and changed subject pretty quickly.

Paraphrasing: "They're trying to fix a social 'problem' with game mechanics, it's just not going to happen"
This made me ask myself, "What do I want from sov, what would make me personally willing to risk billions over a little patch of virtual space", the answer of course is nothing, at least the way sov is currently implemented. Now of course I have flown out in multi-billion isk ships in slowcat fleets etc, so why did I do that? For gudfites and because my alliance says so.
It's important to note that I am joe average, a real 'no face line member' so to speak, I do what I'm told, I fit doctrine ships, shittalk in alliance and corp, run incursions in highsec for isk and I occasionally get gudfites. It's important to note this because as I've pointed out, I don't give a rats ass about sov.

And if I don't give a rats ass about sov then what's to say that any of the other average joes give a rats ass about sov? (Hint: they don't)

I think the crux of the matter is that sov only appeals to the players at the 'high level', the diplos, the leaders, the FCs etc. People keep saying "oh people are just doing what people do, banding together with their friends and forming huge blobs and ******* everyone" but that frankly isn't true, as one of those people I do not join a nullsec alliance to fight beside my bros against the world, I join it to have content made for me and I join it for safe space to rat/station spin in. An alliance to me is an umbrella that I enjoy the game from under without getting wet.

Why I think this is? Alliance level income aka moon mining, to me it's irrelevant but to an alliance it's everything. Frankly I think it is the (almost) sole cause of stagnation in nullsec, those who have it don't want to lose it and those who don't have it aren't big enough to take it. It drives nullsec and yet 90% of nullsec isn't 'high level' enough to give a **** about it.
Recently CCP have been pushing the 'average player interactivity' with fozziesov and various other changes but they need look no further than this, as it's the very epitome of non-interactivity for most people who play the game.
What I would rather see: Move it out of the high maintenance 'hard to get to' moons and put it somewhere else. The belts/PI/ring mining (like they hinted at a while back) for example, making sure of course that their are various pockets of space of high/low quality space to help drive conflict. In null only (at least in large quantities) and limited to ensure the overall supply to highsec doesn't change too drastically.

Why I think this will help:

• Simply put if you want people to fight for space you need to give them something to fight for.
• It has the added bonus of hitting the overly large powerblocs with a sledgehammer, forcing them to make isk off the backs of their members rather than being self sufficient and handing out SRPs left right and center. Then of course with alliances making more money off their members (via corp->alliance membership fees most likely) and would no doubt result in corps being more likely to not want to be under the umbrella of that alliance anymore.
• Nullsec space is more desirable to more people, no of course you'll never get the carebears to leave highsec but it gets semi carebear incursion runners like me to want to go out and risk my ship to make isk/content, even if it is just a T1 mining barge for example

Hopefully the combined pressure of cut income, disgruntled corps and higher value space (to most people) is enough to make people who were not content creators to leave the umbrella and start making their own content.

TLDR; Rather than trying to give the current content creators more reasons to create content/trying to direct their content, it is so much easier and logical to try to give your average F1 clicker a reason to go out and start creating content. Not everyone will of course, but some will, and that's enough to make a difference.

So basically, you're telling yourself to go out and create content.

Never know what you have until you don't have it. Make your enemies think about that.