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Calm down now, this is a friendly discussion. This thread is about citadels though, so perhaps we shouldn't drag it off topic to why "Eve is dying" as we already have two of those threads going in GD. But I will address your points briefly:

1. Of course, incursions take place everywhere but wormholes. But that doesn't change the fact they dramatically buffed the income potential in highsec. Highsec was made much more lucrative after the Incursion expansion than before. That is a fact.
2. I never said it was the "most lucrative". I said it was too lucrative for how safe it is. And it is.
3. I specifically acknowledged there were other factors. That also doesn't change the fact Eve player counts have declined ever since Incursion was released. That is not proof of anything, just an interesting correlation.

This is all off-topic. I only raised these points to address the previous poster who was presenting factually incorrect information about the history of highsec safety. Citadels should not be "invulnerable and totally safe" as they asserted. They are needed to drive conflict and make player stories, not clutter up highsec as invulnerable monuments until they day the server is switched off.

So hostile. This isn't a court of law or a contest of some sort, but a discussion of a new game mechanic.

But you have my apologies, my language use was imprecise. In that sentence I used "most lucrative" in the ISK/effort sense, not the absolute ISK value amount sense. The point still stands though. Highsec is much more lucrative now (in both senses) than it was before the Incursion expansion.

As for the rest, I think our positions our clear. I don't think we need to rehash what amount of effort we think is appropriate to contest an XL Citadel. Personally, I think one person like the original entosis design would be best minimum to drive conflict in the game. But I am glad though we both agree that they should not be invulnerable in highsec. At least that is a place to start.

from the dev blog BACK INTO THE STRUCTURE

Rigs: Will work similarly to ship rigs – they cannot be removed without being destroyed once inserted and will provide various benefits. The main difference remains in the magnitude of the given bonuses, which will be quite dramatic here. They will take over the old Outpost upgrade system as a whole, and may be several ten times (or more) more expensive than the structure hull itself. By extension, we want the new structure equivalent of Outposts to be available for high-security space, but providing less bonuses due to the reduced risk this implies. Rigs will be the means to deliver on that vision, either by having different rigs which can only be used in separate security status areas, or by having rigs bonuses change depending on its parent hull location.



If you read that you will see they do want outpost level structures in high sec and what will be a major driving cost is that a lot of the functionality will be in the rigs. Which means you can save alot of the cost by not using rigs. Also the discussion included low level wh which the only way to bring battleships (c1) or capitals (c2 other than the orca) is to build them in the hole.

A large pos cost ~400 mil to fuel for a month. where as this if just used as a parking garage would be nothing.

"On your point of there not being enough pilots, when Eve presents a challenge, players improvise. Large numbers of players have come together for incursions, FW, pocos, live events etc., and a lot of that has been community-based and not tied just to alliances or corps." it is this community i was referring to you know the one that was defined by the guy I was quoting at the time.

So you understand that it is just a correlation, but apparently doesn't grasp the concept fully anyway(see highlighted bold). One can read statements like this(less non-consensual pvp = death of EVE due to analysis of graphs depicting online accounts pr time unit) all over the forums, and it annoys me. Not that I don't agree that more conflict (consensual and non-consensual) is good and less is bad, but simply because you let your personal opinion colour the data you interpret.

This is not only bad practise in science, but also shows that you are not able to comprehend the data(and especially the limitations) you have at hand.

You look at a graph of logged in accounts pr time unit and see a lot trends because, that is how a brain works. But you fail to recognize that the brain can also see patterns where none are. Talk to a person suffering from a Schizophrenic paranoid disorder, if you want to see this taken to the extreme. It is amazing(meant with the highest degrees of respect) to see what they can get correlations between sometimes.

That is the reason why people always drag the good old "correlation doesn't imply causation" horse out of the stable. It is one of the most important things to keep in mind when looking at data, and frankly the importance of this is always underestimated.

Back to the quote:
You claim that other factors could contribute, but anyway end up with your favorite hypothesis



Here is the problem with that: IT ALSO DOENS'T PROVE THAT that removing/nerfing non-consensual PvP in highsec has produced any deline over the last five years. There is a correlation, yes, but only that. The rest of the link between these two occurences are hundred percent in your head, considering the data at hand.



This is one possible hypothesis, yes. Still there is no available proof that the growth has anything to do with how dangerous highsec was. It is very manipulative to look at a graph of online accounts, and couple it to a fictive quantity called "non-consensual pvp in highsec". You have not accounted for what was going on in null or low, because how could you? you have no data that would be able to sheed a light on this. making this discussion void.

Don't take this as a personal attack, it is not.

I am just getting tired, of people on the fora making bigger claims than their evidence can support. This is a general plaque pestering the internet .

I do wish, that people would stop presenting opinions based on correlations as facts. The fact is that no one knows what is behind the player decline. A lot of people have theories based on observations and annecdotes, but no one knows the true picture not even CCP.

You could counter me, with saying "chill dude, this is just a discussion on the internet, no need to go all semantic and total ******", and you are right... I could chill... but I will not.

All these discussions on the fora (plex prices, EVE's economy, EVE's health and balancing) are mostly peoples ill-considered opinions that they cannot back up with evidence. They still demand to be taken serious though, but how can you when their claims are built on non-proveable correlations? the house with a crappy foundation will crumble. No discussion is better than a discussion based on observations disguised as facts.

TLDR: Please, please stop presenting annecdotes, correlations and opinions as facts.

To your oppinion that 1 man should be able to destroy a XL 100 bill. structure in highsec, my oppinion is I would like to see more people. At least 20-30. This is a mmo, and i think it should be a group achievement to remove the biggest citadels no matter where they are.

With my experiences with the internet I do fear I preach for the deaf though,

fly safe 07

You are pointing out facts on the rigs that I fully understand, the only thing I am not clear about is exactly how they will do the loot drops in terms of them, the way they said it indicated that things may drop from the structure and it may include what went into the rigs, that question I am waiting on.

An XL is a stupidly expensive parking garage..., made doubly stupid by making it in situ in a C1, the mind just boggles at someone doing that...

Its Black Pedro who is saying that there is not enough players in what I can define as the combined HTFU / ganking community, I disagree with him, I think that people will rise to this challenge, if they don't then they are useless scrubs. But it was not clear what community you were talking about.


I and a number of others have noted a spike in buying on certain key rigs stuff and we suspect that a leak has already occurred on what will be used to make these things, typical Eve...

What are you on about? Correlations are a very important part of science, used all the time to make and test hypotheses especially when controlled experiments cannot be performed.

Draw your own conclusions. But it is noteworthy that the stagnation and decline of the player counts correlates with the bubble-wrapping of highsec and the release of the PvE ISK faucet known as Incursion. As I clearly stated that is not the only factor influencing this number, but it is an interesting and true correlation.

It also fits with CCP's data at fanfest showing a correlation between losing a ship to another player (either to a war or a gank) during the first 30 days and subscribing to the game. The simplest conclusion is that an uninteresting highsec literally bores new players out of the game. Just so you don't start in on me again, I am well aware that is also just a correlation. You can choose to believe that fact means whatever you wish.

Of course not, I never said it did. All that proves is that player counts were highest when the Incursion expansion was released. They have only gone down since then.

There are many factors contributing to that decline and does not say that incursions are responsible for the numbers. However, it does strongly argue against the hypothesis that incursions (or more lucrative PvE in highsec) are good for the game. If that hypothesis was true, you would have predicted that the player numbers to have continued to go up.

It better fits the idea that a too safe and too lucrative highsec is stifling the game.
Of course I don't. You present a rational, albeit slightly naive, response to my post. But correlations are facts. They do not prove causation as any first-year university student can tell you, but they do reflect underlying relationships between factors in the dataset. I have looked at the data and come to a conclusion - that's all it is. If you want to look at the data and come to some other conclusion, I would happy to hear your theories, but even that does not prove my assertions wrong. Unless you are aware of some data I am missing?

Reasonable people can look at the data and come to two different conclusions, especially when the data is incomplete and lacking properly controlled tests. Even CCP doesn't have enough data to definitely identify the cause of the decline, and as until recently (the NPE Opportunities test) they never tried any rigorous scientific testing. Are you suggesting because they can't prove something definitively they shouldn't even look at the data and at least try to determine what what the causative factors are? Just throw up their hands and say "we can't know for sure, so why even bother formulating a hypothesis"?

Actually, take that last question as purely rhetorical. I am feeling bad about continuing this discussion here as it way off-topic so I will not continue this discussion on why a safe highsec is bad for the game here unless it directly relates to the citadels.

The correlation vs causation argument is stupid and off topic, it's not like you can perform a controlled experiment on what changes caused a reduction in player retention.

I'm glad you're optimistic, Black Pedro, I'm sure not. Maybe they'll tone this down a little and it'll only be three times as much structure grinding as large towers are now, which is still far too much. Everyone hates structure grinding, let's give them entosis! Oh actually everyone loved structure grinding, let's give them five times as much! An XL citadel has more HP than an iHub used to! You can't seriously argue in favour of a ridiculous HP wall like that.

Sure, let's balance a mechanic that is suppose to be accessible to the all the player base around a near max skilled character flying an expensive pirate battleship.

CCP's own numbers from the devblog say up to 225 players will be needed in battleships so I am perfectly fine with my characterization of 100-200 players to meet the 30 minute target.

But even asking a small WH corp or highsec group to field 40 max-DPS faction/pirate battleships to even attempt to attack them in the time proposed by the design is way too much. Also, don't forget these are the minimum requirements - the citadel is suppose to fight back.

I wonder what the AOE dmg output from the outpost will be (for WH's)

edit: Also they are making a separate thing for markets. so XL's wont be needed for that.

Lady Rift, right i mis that.

In this case i don't even see an utility for Citadel in HS.

Edit : Read the "Shake my Citadel" devblog. the market and office hub become the citadel.

And this stay true :
"Secondly, for now we aren't even sure that an XL in HS will be useful. Since is only advantage on L size is the ability to dock MS and Titan, useless in HS.

Third, use an XL as private market hub in HS will need hundreds of client to be viable.
An XL Citadel in HS will not be protect by 10 players but by hundreds and come to defend it for 10 players will just be boring."